Given the transactions costs incurred by private equity funds, fund managers and portfolio companies are often leanly staffed – or even not staffed at all – by in-house legal teams. The over-reliance on external counsel can be hugely inefficient. Steve Yoost, general counsel of cloud hosting service HOSTING, argues that in-house counsel can increase the value of private equity investments by effectively managing and mitigating risk.
It happens in every private equity deal; private equity firms engage outside legal counsel to conduct extensive pre-acquisition due diligence. The primary result of outside counsel’s hundreds – or even thousands – of hours of legal review is a thorough due diligence report highlighting actual and potential legal risks associated with the target company.
