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Higson, Chris and Stucke, Rüdiger, The Performance of Private Equity (February 16, 2012). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2009067
Abstract:
"We present conclusive evidence on the performance of private equity, using a high quality dataset of fund cash flows that covers about 85 percent of capital ever raised by U.S. buyout funds. For almost all vintage years since 1980, U.S. buyout funds have significantly outperformed the S&P 500. Liquidated funds from 1980 to 2000 have delivered excess returns of about 450 basis points per year. Adding partially liquidated funds up to 2005, excess returns rise to over 800 basis points. We discuss several misleading aspects of previous research studies and their underlying data; we show that some influential published studies which find net returns to investors that are negative or neutral benchmarked against the S&P 500 have significantly understated the returns to U.S. buyout funds."
Keywords: Private Equity, Performance, IRR