Warburg Pincus sees tougher competition in Southeast Asia, as trade war tempers private equity deals in China

Investors have ‘woken up’ to the opportunities in Southeast Asia, according to Jeffrey Perlman, Warburg Pincus’s head of Southeast Asia

The growing appetite for deals is ‘a good thing’ as private equity firms consider exits from existing investments, Perlman said

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Jeffrey Perlman, managing director and head of Southeast Asia at Warburg Pincus, says the private equity firm remains a long-term investor in its markets. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 10:45am, 6 Nov 2019Updated: 10:13pm, 6 Nov 2019

Private equity firms are facing stiffer competition in Southeast Asia as geopolitical tensions, including the US-China trade war, have prompted peers to look for investment targets outside the mainland and developed markets in Asia, according to Warburg Pincus.

“Investors have kind of woken up to the opportunities in Southeast Asia, in particular Vietnam,” Jeffrey Perlman, a Warburg Pincus managing director and head of Southeast Asia, said in an interview. The region has been a “significant beneficiary” of shifting trade policies and there remains “tremendous opportunities” despite rising valuations, he added.

The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies for the past year has forced some producers to relocate their plants from China, particularly to Southeast Asia, to avoid higher tariff rates. This in turn has contributed to a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing engine and the slowest economic growth on record last quarter.

Southeast Asia has a 650 million population and a combined economy worth US$2.8 trillion, according to the US-Asean Business Council, and US$3.4 trillion of global trade transits through the region annually. It is also home to some of the largest private equity targets such as ride hailing entity Grab and Gojek and logistics firm GLP.

New York-based Warburg Pincus, which has more than US$62 billion of private equity assets under management, pulled off one of the biggest exits this year when ESR Cayman raised US$1.6 billion from its initial public offering in Hong Kong last month. The IPO is the second-largest in the city after Budweiser Brewing Company APAC.

Since its formation in 1966, the firm has invested in excess of US$79 billion in more than 880 companies worldwide. The private equity firm, which celebrated its 25th year of investing in China earlier this year, has a long history of investments in India and made its forays into Southeast Asia in the past seven years. While there have been a lot of macro uncertainties, the firm remains a long-term investor in its markets, Perlman said.