PeHUB editor Dan Primack received a call from Apax Partners looking to clarify rumors of layoffs at the international buyout firm. Apax allegedly told him the firm does not issue layoffs but holds annual employee reassessments that sometimes lead to a 10% staff reduction.
Apax, Carlyle Group and many of their peers are scaling back their staff -- whether you call it layoffs or not is simply semantics -- as they experience what BusinessWeek calls "Private Equity's Year from Hell."
Investment banks are also feeling the pain of the economic contraction, but Thomas Weisel Partners, best known as a tech bank, found a solution: Last year it bought a boutique serving energy and mining companies. Thomas Weisel's Lionel Conacher tells The Deal's Tech Confidential that there are a lot of similarities between Silicon Valley startups and Canadian mining companies. - Matthew Wurtzel
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