The American Chamber of Commerce in Malta recently held its first of a series of four seminars it will be organising over the coming months. The overall subject of the seminars is “Alternative Sources of Finance: A US Perspective”.

Anton Tabone, president of AmCham Malta introduced the seminar and gave a general overview of AmCham-Malta’s raison d’etre and its contribution in seeing an ever-stronger commercial relationship between the two countries. Dr Tabone stated that AmCham Malta was all in favour of witnessing a greater awareness campaign about Malta, its products and services in the United States.

Following Dr Tabone’s introductory speech, Jason Davies, Charge’ D’Affairs at the US Embassy in Malta, spoke about the role of the embassy in facilitating business for those Maltese interested in doing business in the USA.

Ron Hopkinson, partner at Latham and Waktins, one of America’s largest law firms with 24 regional and international offices, was the guest speaker on private equity. Mr Hopkinson focuses his practice on mergers and acquisitions and is global head of the private Equity Practice Group.

Mr Hopkinson gave the audience a detailed insight into the powerful world of private equity firms, their huge financial clout and their contribution to the US economy over the last five years. The size of private equity deals in the States has been growing rapidly and it is now typical that $20 billion and over deals get concluded.

Mr. Hopkinson explained that the private equity phenomenon was not really anticipated until five years ago but it now makes up 25 per cent of the US economy and will continue growing as an alternative to public companies.

Deals are becoming ever more complicated and competition between firms has become tighter despite a recent tendency of seeing groups of top private equity firms merging together on a particular bid. He spoke about the situation that unfolded over the last few weeks that has seen a slight correction in the positive upward trend as a result of the US housing market crisis.

The Carlyle Group, KKR and Blackstone are considered largest private equity firms in the United States. Mr Hopkinson believes that should one US private equity firm decide to move to Malta in order to seek business opportunities on the islands and in the rest of the Mediterranean, it may well be that other private equity would then follow suit.