>> My name is Ariel Goldblatt.
I work at Apax Partners; I'm a Senior
Associate in their Healthcare Team.
Prior to Apax, I worked in
banking and also in mezzanine debt.
And got my MBA at Warden after having graduated
from undergrad from Penn State, Honors College.
Apax is a global private equity firm.
So we've got about 15 billion
dollars under assets.
And we invest across 5 different sectors,
health care being the one that I focus on.
And we look to invest in, you know, growing
companies, but a little bit more mature,
the ones that we think we
can take to the next level.
So bring them to a new geography or,
you know, open up new product lines,
help them buy a potential
competitor, that makes sense.
So that's kind of what we do in terms of
what we look for to buy and then in terms
of portfolio management we spend a
lot of time with the management teams.
So it depends, when you're on a live deal,
basically I'll be coordinating with advisers,
setting up scopes of work
that we want to work on.
I'll be helping the analysts with the
financial model, making sure the returns,
we're testing the model and making sure that
the returns are what they should be based
on what price we're paying and what we
think the company's really going to grow at.
I'll be talking to lawyers
sometimes during the day and banks
to make sure we're getting the best intelligence
and that they're helping us value companies
and that I know what's going on in the market.
So it's busy right now because well I think
one, the debt markets are just very hot.
So the debt markets, as you know, during
a lot of the crisis had kind of slowed up
and stopped up, making it much
harder to do private equity,
because we do what's called a leverage buyout.
So you basically put in a certain
amount of equity when you buy a company,
but you also add in a lot of debt,
so when the debt isn't available,
it makes it much harder to do the math.
So the debt markets are very hot, so
I think that's also playing into it,
as well as there is a lot of
new companies that are coming
out that are realizing the markets
are good and they want to --
they're looking for more money so
they can grow into new verticals,
and someone to kind of sponsor them.
I'm on call like 24/7.
I mean, it's better.
When you're not on a live deal, it's not as bad,
you probably work somewhere around 50, 60 hours.
But when you're on a live deal,
I mean, you're on call 24/7.