Listed Private Equity

The increasing popularity of private equity ('PE'), and especially leveraged buyouts in the late 1980s, established a novel area of research in these investments. First, research concentrated on the taking private of large corporations in the US. In his most significant paper, Jensen (1989) claimed that PE firms which function as activist investors incentivize the management of their portfolio companies to maximize value, and concluded that in the long run, private companies, owned by PE firms, would outperform firms under public ownership. Others argued that PE firms simply buy companies at a