Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Weathering the Private Equity Slowdown: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 5-5-25
05 May 2025
In this episode, RSM Partner Rick Kes joins Scott Becker to discuss the current lull in private equity deal flow, the impact of market uncertainty, and why leadership, adaptability, and business fundamentals matter more than ever in a volatile environment.
Full Episode
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by RSM partner, Rick Kess. Rick, so many different things going on in the private equity world. A big deal announced today for Skechers, a $9.4 billion deal. That's a welcome positive after a quarter that seemed very slow on deals.
Apollo, their CEO says in an interview that they've largely been on deal pause for a little bit. What is the reading of the tea waves? What are you seeing at RSM in terms of the deal world? And what can we expect?
Yeah, I mean, Scott, I think, you know, obviously the deal world's been a little slower than anyone would probably like it to be. Lots of reasons for that, obviously. You know, we've got interest rates, you know, higher than we would normally like them to be. We've got, you know, political uncertainty, things of that nature.
Obviously, I think people that listen regularly know I follow healthcare the closest, and healthcare's got a lot of headwinds between Medicaid changes and other things that might impact the healthcare world, especially in the services sector. I think there's a lot of headwinds in that respect. I think a lot of us are still thinking at some point, big deals have to happen.
You mentioned this deal today with Skechers and other deals. I think with the amount of capital that's available to be spent. And then, you know, the hold period that some of the investments are at, you know, in terms of what happened in, you know, 19 and 20 and 21, you know, with the deal flow volumes that we saw then, a lot of those kind of are at the hold period end.
So you'd think at some point, some of these assets will start trading again, and some of these funds will put their capital that they have available to use. But at what point that might be, it's hard to tell.
I mean, unless you have a crystal ball, I guess, you know, so, you know, I think, I think we'll continue to kind of work on, you know, being prepared when, when that deal full volume kind of opens up, if the spigot opens up, so to speak. And then, you know, I think at this point we're still kind of waiting for that to happen.
Thank you. And what do you sort of see in terms of, of sort of opening up, starting to get going again and, What is your sense? Are you starting to hear more rumblings of it as the stock market returns? Are people feeling a little bit more confident? Or what do you see?
Yeah, I mean, obviously the public markets inform people just because of the availability of data, right? People can access it, they understand it, they see it on the news, everything, you know, it's right in front of you all day long. So, you know, I think the public markets influence sentiment, they influence lots of things. So,
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