A Quote by Ron Williams

As a CEO, I had significant exposure to private equity, enough that I had in no way bought into the media's caricature: rapacious privateers who destroy companies.

Ron Williams

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Bought Caricature CEO Companies Destroy Enough Equity Exposure Had Media Private Private Equity Significant Way

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Ron Williams
American - Businessman
Born: 1949

We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies.

Stephen Pagliuca

When I was a CEO, I thought I understood private equity. I didn't. And what I've learned since my retirement, and since becoming directly involved in the world of private equity, points the way to a new career path for thousands of talented senior executives - and a new engine for value creation.

Ron Williams

Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies.

Clayton Christensen

I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs.

Stephen Pagliuca

I'm reading the way a lot of technology executives have decried 'gatekeepers' and 'traditional media,' and that one of the promises of 'new media' was that it would break the chokehold that old media companies had on public opinion.

Franklin Foer

Exposure is about, among other things, the ferocity of the press and the way - in an echo of some of Shakespeare's plays - the modern media creates heroes to destroy them.

Mal Peet

Private equity has absolutely no reason to exist. The private equity holder has all the upside and the banks all the downside.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Being a good private equity investor is more complicated than it seems. I would say that there are a few characteristics that are important. If you look at the skill set that you need to ultimately be a successful private equity investor, at least at the senior level, you have to be, in this business, a good investor. You have to be able to help companies perform and you have to have judgment around exiting investments. If you look at the skill sets there, they include some things you can teach and some that you can't.

David Bonderman

Carli Fiorina says companies are consolidating because it's the only way to compete with big, corrupt government. "This is how socialism starts." Is that also why she bought Compaq when she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard?

Kevin Drum

The problem that we've had is four media companies run media, globally. And some say they're on the Right and some say they're on the Left; look, they're all afraid of losing Ford as a client. So they're all, by definition, huge companies that are going to be inherently conservative.

Shane Smith

I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.

Bill Ackman

Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead.

Matt Taibbi

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

James Surowiecki

I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.

Jim Rogers

A friend of my mom's was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.

Ben Affleck

Nobody in my generation ever started out in private equity. We got there by accident. There was no private equity business - actually, the word didn't even exist - when I started. I got there out of the purest of happenstance and so I think many people find what they really enjoy doing just in that way. So another piece of advice for you is: don't worry too much about what you're going to be doing when you get out of business school - life will come your way.

David Bonderman

A Quote by Ron Williams

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