Over the past ten years, private equity and venture capital have played an increasingly important role in the European economy. In parallel to the increase in investments, contribution of the private equity and venture capital industry to employment in Europe has grown. Against this background,...

This paper analyzes the determinants of returns generated by European private equity funds. It starts from the presumption that this asset class is characterized by illiquidity, stickiness and segmentation. As a consequence, Gompers and Lerner (2000) have shown that venture deal valuations are...