We present new evidence on the persistence of U.S. private equity (buyout and venture capital) funds using cash-flow data sourced from Burgiss’s large sample of institutional investors. Previous research, studying largely pre-2000 data, finds strong persistence for both buyout and venture...

General Partners (GPs) in private equity face a trade-off between focusing their skills and effort on fewer investments to earn higher returns, or investing more broadly to reduce risk through diversification. Using a novel, deal-level dataset of 5,925 global investments from 1999 to 2016, we...

This paper provides the first large-sample analysis of buyout and venture capital fund values over their lifetimes. Specifically, we examine interim fund investment multiples (TVPIs), internal rates of return (IRRs), and direct-alphas based on the current reported net asset values (NAVs) at each...

This paper provides a first look at newly available data on the holdings of private equity (PE) funds. Because research has been hampered by the lack of comprehensive, high-quality data on portfolio companies, this new source offers the potential for a wide range of research. Provided by...

We propose and test a framework of private information acquisition and decision timing for asset allocators hiring outside investment managers. Using unique data on due diligence interactions between an allocator and 860 hedge funds, we find that the production of private information complements...

We apply advances in analysis of mix frequency and sparse data to estimate "unsmoothed" private equity (PE) Net Asset Values (NAVs) at the weekly frequency for individual funds. Using simulations and a large sample of buyout and venture funds, we show that our method yields superior estimates of...

We survey more than 200 private equity (PE) managers from firms with $1.9 trillion of assets under management (AUM) about their portfolio performance, decisionmaking and activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that PE managers have significant incentives to maximize value, their actions...