The paper investigates the motives of activity (entry and exit) of Private Equity (PE) investors in European companies. Investment of a PE firm is not viewed unambiguously. First, it is claimed that PE investment is made for the sake of seeking shortterm gains by taking control and utilizing the...

We build on previous work on operational performance evaluation of private equity portfolio companies as we are able to at least partially decrypt the black box consisting of restructuring tools these investors use and the corresponding impact on their portfolio companies. Beyond answering...