Veteran investor Glenn Hutchins, one of the co-founders of Silver Lake, said he’s avoiding high yield debt because current pricing and deal terms are unattractive.
The investor, who also sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said he didn’t see systemic risk in the sector, however. Hutchins, who no longer works at Silicon Valley-based Silver Lake, blamed excess liquidity for “bubble like behavior” in certain markets, that include high-yield debt, index and exchange-traded fund markets as well as late stage venture capital investments such as those in WeWork.
“The big question is whether this creates systemic risk or the potential for market adjustment,” Hutchins said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “A lot of this is at the corporate level and is not provided by deposit-taking institutions so I am not worried about the systemic element of it, but I am not a buyer right now.”
Silver Lake, which was founded in 1999 and has more than $43 billion in combined assets under management, has been involved in some of the biggest technology deals since its inception. The Menlo Park, California-based firm’s leveraged buyouts include Dell Technologies Inc., Skype Technologies SA and Seagate Technology Plc.
He also said he saw elements of the geo-political tensions between the U.S. and China becoming a “quasi-permanent feature” of economic analysis and business planning for the foreseeable future.
Hutchins is also co-founder of North Island, a private equity firm that took a substantial stake in Virtu Financial Inc., a high-frequency market maker. He has been a board member for the New York Fed since 2011.
--With assistance from Tom Keene.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.