On 18 March 2010, the Guidelines Monitoring Group (GMG) published “Improving transparency and disclosure”, a guide to good practice reporting for private equity portfolio companies (Guidance) under the Walker guidelines for enhanced disclosure by portfolio companies and private equity firms (Guidelines).

The Guidance follows the GMG’s December 2009 annual review of compliance with the Guidelines, in which it concluded that the quality of disclosures in portfolio companies’ financial reports varied significantly between those companies.

The Guidance aims to improve the quality and consistency of such reporting and, by extension, its credibility with such companies’ stakeholders. It suggests how relevant portfolio companies can go beyond the basic reporting requirements of the Guidelines, illustrating each point with extracts from particular portfolio companies’ financial statements from the last two years.

The Guidance also notes that the GMG expects to announce, in the first half of 2010, its conclusions on whether to extend the number of private equity firms and portfolio companies to which the Guidelines would potentially apply, by reducing the portfolio company enterprise value and market capitalisation thresholds which currently govern participation.

Read more:

http://admin.bvca.co.uk/library/documents/GMG_Improving_transparency_and_disclosure.pdf