The Online Gambling Landscape

In 2006, Congress passed the Uniform Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (“UIGEA”), which “prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law;” failure to comply with the UIGEA …

Online Gambling in the United States

  Gambling, and especially online gaming, in the United States has a long and complicated past. Recently, three states, Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey, have passed legislation allowing for online gambling within their state borders. This blog post reviews a history of online gaming in the United States, examines recent areas of legalization for online …

Africa: The New Private Equity Frontier

Investing in Africa probably doesn’t sound too lucrative to your average fund manager. The thought of investing in Africa probably seems too risky to most investors with its inadequate infrastructure, corruption, and weak rule of law, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives. Despite these concerns, though, investment in Africa is becoming much more popular, …

Jeonse: Private Lending in the Korean Real Estate Market

The Jeonse system is a product of South Korea’s development era during the 1960’s and ‘70s. This was a period of rapid urban migration, and in order to facilitate mobility, the South Korean government passed legislation to restrict banks from lending to real estate developers, landlords, or tenants. The idea of “Jeonse” or “helping one’s …

Venture Capitalists Target Untapped Markets in the “MidBest”

Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have recently started to make an unexpected move east from Silicon Valley to put down roots in an unlikely location: the Midwest.1 Historically, the majority of serious entrepreneurs from around the country have flocked to Silicon Valley and New York in search of easily accessible and trendy tech industry jobs.2 The …

China’s Increasing Private Equity Investment in the US

The United States and China recently planned to restart talks for an investment treaty with “Beijing dropping previous efforts to protect certain sectors of its economy from the start.”1 While government-directed investment into resources and finance remain the vast majority of overall Chinese investment in the United States (over 90%), many private investment players have …

Petroleum and Private Equity: PE Firms Increase Investments in the Oil and Gas Industry

Demand for global energy resources has made the energy industry an attractive target for private equity investment. According to a 2013 report by Bain & Company, the strength of recent fundraising activity by PE funds indicates that energy investments will be popular in years to come.1 Within the energy industry, the most attractive area for …

New Faces in Venture Capital

Often, when we think of the people involved in financial markets, images of old, stodgy men come to mind. But this is not usually the case, especially in today’s modern venture capital markets. Especially in the technology industry, venture capitalists hope to get in on the ground floor of startups that will become “the next …

American Technology Entrepreneurs Take on Skeptical Indian Investment Market

Ambitious American technology entrepreneurs have recently started to target the investment market in India.1 Historically, India had a reputation for being a notoriously tough market for start-ups, even for the most promising young businesses.2 The inability to succeed as a start-up in India, however, is not due to lack of proposed innovations. Compared to America’s …

The Line for Food Is Getting Longer for Venture Capitalists

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in food among Americans. More people obsess about particular superfoods, check which farms certain ingredients come from, and become fans of certain celebrity chefs.1 Packaged gourmet foods, as well as foreign foods, are being sold at an unprecedented rate, and food co-op membership is at an all-time …