Patricia A. Woertz Quotes

When you are buying companies, everyone in the company feels very good. Their chests are puffed out. At Blackstone, I used to tell people that there is nothing more fun than buying a company with somebody else's money. The business is growing, which creates more opportunity for your employees.

I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds.

When investors, particularly investment bankers, talk about splitting up companies, there's a lot of discussion about multiple expansion, and the reality is multiple expansion is an outcome, not a strategy.

The deal machinations many companies put themselves through, while certainly a bonanza for investment bankers, can confound the typical investor.

As part of our research, we monitor just about every announced deal globally that is in excess of a billion dollars.

VCs like acquisitions as much as IPOs because the acquiring companies often can rationalize paying large multiples over the current valuation of the startup.

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs.

I think one of the key differentiators I bring to the table as a venture capitalist is a solid understanding of the public markets and how they operate.

How do you make money? Spinoffs, split-ups, liquidations, mergers and acquisitions.

Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.

Big banks have long had private equity divisions that put up capital for deals too complex or risky for individual shareholders to finance.

I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs. I went to Harvard Business School. I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough environment.

Mergers and acquisitions, we are always looking for that.

I have never had a situation where an investee company would have a good value by having a banker. Investment bankers are there to please future clients. You are a temporary client; they are therefore not to get you the best valuation.

Professional services industries like finance, consulting, and legal services are, by definition, meta-industries. That is, they serve to help large companies raise money, buy and sell each other, reorganize, implement new systems, conduct complex transactions, and so forth.

For me, one of the highlights of being in the private equity world is that you need to learn a lot and very quickly about different businesses. So it's always a continuing learning experience where you can apply what you know, of course, by way of judgment and by way of numerical analysis. You're always investing in new businesses, which is a learning experience in itself. I think that is a wonderful thing and I think it makes for intellectual challenge and for continued personal growth. That, for me, is the highlight of this job.

Let's be honest: the trappings of investment banking are quite tempting. I do miss it sometimes. And to be honest, there was a time I'd read the 'WSJ' in the morning, and for years I have done that.

I wanted to be a venture capitalist and join Sequoia Capital. They've financed and helped built some really special and enormously successful companies, including Google, Yahoo, Paypal, YouTube, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, and also Zappos.

Private equity does pay very well, and my counterparts, guys that I grew up with who are still working at a number of firms, all make a lot of money.

In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners.

I've been a customer of the top venture capital firms, so I know exactly what they do and don't do.

As I became a venture capitalist, it's almost like I went to the dark side for a while.

I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that.

I have either run private equity funded companies or been a partner in a private equity fund since 1982. I've had a front row view of the vital role private equity continues to play in building and keeping American businesses competitive in the global economy.