Mannerisms

Probably not much. Cicero fretted about the public good, as did Sir Ronald Cohen, founder and former chairman of Apax, who saw his company's venture capital activity as a force for public good.

Now Apax is jettisoning venture capital as part of its investment strategy. Apax will not earmark any of the new fund it is raising for venture capital investment. Instead the fund will be 100 per cent devoted to private equity buy-outs.

"Our last fund Apax Europe VI, which was raised in 2005 is 97 per cent invested in buy-outs. The fund that we are raising now will invest solely in buyouts", says an Apax spokesman, "we haven't made a VC investment for a few years. It's partially to do with Ronald Cohen retiring, and the new CEO bringing in a new strategic direction, and it's because our limited partners (investors) have become a lot more sophisticated in the way they allocate funds to investment firms like us."

"It's increasingly untenable for one firm to do multi-stage venture capital investments at one end, and billion dollar buy-outs at the other end. And it's also a matter of our internal resource allocation," adds the Apax spokesman.

Obviously it's nicer to be put an employee to work on a deal which delivers a ten figure return than a nine figure return.

And that sums up the new breed of investors. You can't blame them. These aren't people who've ever founded anything, or built anything, or created anything. They're typically young, they're clever, they're switched on, their brief is to flip numbers and make as big a return as possible.

And sod the public good.

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