Australia's private equity market remains buoyant despite interest from offshore groups starting to wane, a leading fund manager has said.
 
According to ING Investment Management (INGIM) private equity director Jon Schahinger, a tightening of the American debt market, following the collapse of several sub prime lenders, has curtailed private equity activity in the US, though the Australian market continues at a healthy pace.

"I'm pretty relaxed about the local market at the moment. While a number of the big overseas managers are leaving the party because of changes to the availability of debt overseas, in Australia it hasn't impacted the market at all," Schahinger said.

"It has obviously impacted global and US players that have been trawling round the markets here looking for the big deals at the big end of town, but that's only a subset of what's been going on in the broader market.

"That number of deals in context to the total number of private equity deals done in Australia is small, as the big overseas players are not interested in the majority of deals done in Australia."

In the local market ING Investment Management private equity has added about 50 new investments to their portfolio in the last 18 months.

INGIM's Australian private equity has also expanded its team with the hire of Hong Kong based Dandan Liu who joins INGIM Australia's private equity investment committee.

Liu recently joined the ING Group as chief investment officer of ING Pomona, a new business established to provide private equity fund-of-funds portfolios.

Richard Hughes, a member of INGIM's private equity team has been made a director and the group is on the hunt for another junior member.