Robert Luke, GED: Next year, difficult for sellers

The financial crisis will make Romanian companies cheaper for private equity funds, a depreciation, which will be both an opportunity for funds willing to invest and a threat to the profits of funds about to make their exits. “The multiples at which companies are evaluated will go down by up to 25%, which is, however, a decline that cannot compare to the much steeper depreciation suffered by the stock market. Next year will be a difficult year for anybody that sells. Those who want to sell in 2009 should expect an evaluation of the company at six times its EBITDA, compared with last year, when they would have seen 8 times the amount,” Robert Luke, managing director of private equity firm GED and president of South Eastern Europe’s Private Equity Association told ZF.