Private

Managers of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms have the same goal in mind: maximizing returns. Yet PE buyout and VC early-stage funds go about it in very…

The internal rate of return is dead. Long live the IRR. “Hey, the IRR looks soooo close to the DaRC!” Michele observed. Michele is our chief technology officer at XTAL…

“I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact.” — Claude Lévi-Strauss As ever…

The internal rate of return (IRR) is not a scientific method to calculate performance. Far from it. Fund managers can manipulate, misreport, or altogether fabricate their results, making them unreliable….

Private equity (PE) investment returns are neither reliable nor predictable. Many of my clients are prepared to accept these as facts. But one private equity myth is harder to dispel,…

“Perhaps what cannot be wholly understood cannot wholly be destroyed.” — Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked Three myths about the reliability, predictability, and resilience of private equity (PE) performance…

The GameStop story returned short-sellers to the front pages of the global financial press. The Reddit crowd’s “Main Street Takes Revenge on Wall Street” narrative cast these short sellers as…

In the 1970s, when trailblazers Henry Kravis and Teddy Forstmann helped launch one of the most successful financial products of the past half-century, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) were conducted on a…

Corporate Governance and Responsible Investment in Private Equity. 2021. Simon Witney. Cambridge University Press (International Corporate Law and Financial Market Regulation Series). Private equity as an investment class is older…

In private equity (PE), there are more ways to calculate the alpha of a portfolio or fund than any other asset class. And in no sector other than private markets…