Limited partners' perceptions of the Central Eastern European venture capital and private equity market

Growth expectations and institutional settings in Central Eastern Europe are assumed to be favorable for the establishment of a vibrant Venture Capital and Private Equity market. Despite this, there is a lack of risk capital. We examine the obstacles to institutional investments in the region through a questionnaire addressed to (potential) Limited Partners world-wide. The respondents provide information about their perceptions of the region. The protection of property rights is the dominant concern, followed by social criteria, such as the belief in the management quality of local people, and the lacking size and liquidity of the Central Eastern European capital markets. However, Limited Partners regard the growth expectations as attractive, and those with exposure in Central Eastern Europe are satisfied with the historical risk and return ratio, they have a good knowledge of the region, are attracted by other emerging regions, and they appreciate the region's entrepreneurial opportunities and the local General Partners. Overall, the region is ranked very favorable compared to other emerging regions, and especially with respect to its economic and entrepreneurial activity.Venture Capital; Private Equity; International Asset Allocation; Institutional Investors;

Allocation determinants of institutional investments in venture capital and private equity limited partnerships in Central Eastern Europe

Growth expectations and institutional settings are favorable in CEE to establish a vibrant VC/PE market. However, there is lacking supply of risk capital. We address the obstacles for institutional investments in the region via a questionnaire addressed to (potential) Limited Partners worldwide. The respondents provide information about their criteria for international asset allocation. The protection of property rights is the dominant concern, followed by the need to find local quality General Partners and by the management quality and skills of local entrepreneurs. Further, the expected deal flow plays an important role for the allocation process, while the investors fear bribing and corruption. CEE is regarded as very attractive, especially the economic and entrepreneurial activity. However, the investors are not comfortable there with the protection of their claims.Venture capital; Private equity; International asset allocation; Institutional investors;

Electron energy spectrum and magnetic interactions in high-T(sub c) superconductors

The character of magnetic interactions in La-Sr-Cu-O and Y-Ba-Cu-O systems is of primary importance for analysis of high-T(sub c) superconductivity in these compounds. Neutron diffraction experiments showed the antiferromagnetic ground state for nonsuperconducting La2CuO4 and YBa2Cu3O6 with the strongest antiferromagnetic superexchange being in the ab plane. The nonsuperconducting '1-2-3' system has two Neel temperatures T sub N1 and T sub N2. The first one corresponds to the ordering of Cu atoms in the CuO2 planes; T sub N2 reflects the antiferromagnetic ordering of magnetic moments in CuO chains relatively to the moments in the planes T sub N1 and T sub N2 depend strongly on the oxygen content. Researchers describe magnetic interactions in high-T superconductors based on the Linear Muffin-Tin Orbitals (LMTO) band structure calculations. Exchange interaction parameters can be defined from the effective Heisenberg hamiltonian. When the magnetic moments are not too large, as copper magnetic moments in superconducting oxides, J sub ij parameters can be defined through the non-local magnetic susceptibility of spin restricted solution for the crystal. The results of nonlocal magnetic susceptibility calculations and the values of exchange interaction parameters for La CuO and YBa2Cu3O7 systems are given in tabular form. Strong anisotropy of exchange interactions in the ab plane and along the c axis in La2CuO4 is obviously seen. The value of Neel temperature found agrees well with the experimental data available. In the planes of '1-2-3' system there are quite strong antiferromagnetic Cu-O and O-O interaction which appear due to holes in oxygen subbands. These results are in line with the magnetic model of oxygen holes pairing in high-T(sub c) superconductors

Implementation of the LDA+U method using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave basis

We provide a straightforward and efficient procedure to combine LDA+U total energy functional with the full potential linearized augmented plane wave method. A detailed derivation of the LDA+U Kohn-Sham type equations is presented for the augmented plane wave basis set, and a simple ``second-variation'' based procedure for self-consistent LDA+U calculations is given. The method is applied to calculate electronic structure and magnetic properties of NiO and Gd. The magnetic moments and band eigenvalues obtained are in very good quantitative agreement with previous full potential LMTO calculations. We point out that LDA+U reduces the total d charge on Ni by 0.1 in NiO

Crystal chemical and quantum chemical studies of Ba(Sr)-Nb oxide compounds

The information available on the BaO(SrO)-NbO-NbO2 system with the niobium atom in the lower oxidation degree is very limited. Very few compounds have been found previously in this system. They are BaNbO3, SrxNbO3(0,7=x=1), Ba2Nb2O9, SrNb8O14; and some suggestions on the BaNb8O14 existence have been made also. At the same time Nb-based oxide compounds could be quite interesting in the search of new noncopper high T(sub c) superconductors Researchers studied Ba(Sr) NbxO2x-2 and Ba2(Sr2)-NbxO2x-1 compositions in the phase diagram of BaO(SrO)-NbO-NbO2 system. The synthesis of the materials was carried out in vacuum at the temperatures of 1000 to 1500 C. Barium carbonate and niobium pentoxide were used as initial components. X-ray analysis was carried out

Ginzburg-Landau Expansion and the Slope of the Upper Critical Field in Disordered Superconductors with Anisotropic Pairing

It is demonstrated that the slope of the upper critical field $|dH_{c2}/dT|_{T_{c}}$ in superconductors with $d$-wave pairing drops rather fast with concentration of normal impurities, while in superconductors with anisotropic $s$-wave pairing $|dH_{c2}/dT|_{T_{c}}$ grows, and in the limit of strong disorder is described by the known dependences of the theory of ``dirty'' superconductors. This allows to use the measurements of $H_{c2}$ in disordered superconductors to discriminate between these different types of pairing in high-temperature and heavy-fermion superconductors.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX 3.0, 4 Postscript figures attached; Submitted to JETP Letter

Quantum disorder versus order-out-of-disorder in the Kugel-Khomskii model

The Kugel-Khomskii model, the simplest model for orbital degenerate magnetic insulators, exhibits a zero temperature degeneracy in the classical limit which could cause genuine quantum disorder. Khaliullin and Oudovenko [Phys. Rev. B 56, R14 243 (1997)] suggested recently that instead a particular classical state could be stabilized by quantum fluctuations. Here we compare their approach with standard random phase approximation and show that it strongly underestimates the strength of the quantum fluctuations, shedding doubts on the survival of any classical state.Comment: 4 pages, ReVTeX, 4 figure