How Do Private Equity Funds Create Value

Private equity firms are snapping up brand-name companies and assembling portfolios that make them immense global conglomerates. They're often able to maximize investor value far more successfully than traditional public companies. How do PE firms become such powerhouses? Learn how, in Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use. Bain chairman Orit Gadiesh and partner Hugh MacArthur use the concise, actionable format of a memo to lay out the five disciplines that PE firms use to attain their edge: · Invest with a thesis using a specific, appropriate 3-5-year goal · Create a blueprint for change--a road map for initiatives that will generate the most value for your company within that time frame · Measure only what matters--such as cash, key market intelligence, and critical operating data · Hire, motivate, and retain hungry managers--people who think like owners · Make equity sweat--by making cash scarce, and forcing managers to redeploy underperforming capital in productive directions This is the PE formulate for unleashing a company's true potential.

“Private equity is more economically significant than ever, as institutions hunt for high returns in a risky world. Private Equity 4.0 examines the role, workings and contribution of this important industry in a straightforward yet revealing manner.” Dr. Josh Lerner Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking Chair, Entrepreneurial Management Unit Harvard Business School A multi-perspective look at private equity's inner workings Private Equity 4.0 provides an insider perspective on the private equity industry, and analyzes the fundamental evolution of the private equity asset class over the past 30 years, from alternative to mainstream. The book provides insightful interviews of key industry figures, and case studies of some of the success stories in the industry. It also answers key questions related to strategy, fund manager selection, incentive mechanisms, performance comparison, red flags in prospectuses, and more. Private Equity 4.0 offers guidance for the many stakeholders that could benefit from a more complete understanding of this special area of finance. Understand the industry's dominant business models Discover how value is created and performance measured Perform a deep dive into the ecosystem of professionals that make the industry hum, including the different incentive systems that support the industry's players Elaborate a clear set of guidelines to invest in the industry and deliver better performance Written by a team of authors that combine academic and industry expertise to produce a well-rounded perspective, this book details the inner workings of private equity and gives readers the background they need to feel confident about committing to this asset class. Coverage includes a historical perspective on the business models of the three major waves of private equity leading to today's 4.0 model, a detailed analysis of the industry today, as well as reflections on the future of private equity and prospective futures. It also provides readers with the analytical and financial tools to analyze a fund's performance, with clear explanations of the mechanisms, organizations, and individuals that make the system work. The authors demystify private equity by providing a balanced, but critical, review of its contributions and shortcomings and moving beyond the simplistic journalistic descriptions. Its ecosystem is complex and not recognizing that complexity leads to inappropriate judgments. Because of its assumed opacity and some historical deviant (and generally transient) practices, it has often been accused of evil intents, making it an ideal scapegoat in times of economic crisis, prodding leading politicians and regulators to intervene and demand changes in practices. Unfortunately, such actors were often responding to public calls for action rather than a thorough understanding of the factors at play in this complex interdependent system, doing often more harm than good in the process and depriving economies of one of their most dynamic and creative forces. Self-regulation has clearly shown its limits, but righteous political interventions even more so. Private equity investment can be a valuable addition to many portfolios, but investors need a clear understanding of the forces at work before committing to this asset class. With detailed explanations and expert insights, Private Equity 4.0 is a comprehensive guide to the industry ways and means that enables the reader to capture its richness and sustainability.

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0, European Business School - International University Schloß Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel, language: English, abstract: Private equity companies are seen as high risk investment funds, trying to gain high returns on their investments in a period of around three to seven years. Even if the private equity industry has played an important role in growth or as an external financing source of established companies as well as newly-established companies, private equity investors are not seen as sustainable value creators. In various occasions, private equity funds are even declared as a greedy instrument to earn fast money. In order to analyse whether private equity companies create value in a sustainable way, this study compares the performance of private equity backed initial public offerings (IPOs) with non-private equity backed IPOs. Moreover, it analyses whether private equity backed IPOs outperform the market. This study evaluates the performance of private equity backed IPOs by performing two separate empirical analyses: one focusing on the UK private equity market - the largest private equity market in Europe - and one focusing on the entire European market. The research conducts a quantitative analysis of secondary data, more specifically by using stock prices of private equity backed firms, non-private equity backed firms and applicable benchmark market indices. Such data was obtained from multiple sources, such as the London Stock Exchange, Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance. In general, the study compares the performance of private equity backed IPOs with non-sponsor IPOs with regard to their price development and abnormal returns. The analysis is based on multiple independent analyses of each IPO. In order to provide a general understanding of this issue and to be able to interpret the research results, the paper discusses the theoretical framework and the findings of other authors. In recent decades, several authors have demonstrated their research on private equity based IPOs as well as the value creation of private equity firms. Based upon these, hypotheses are formulated, which are then subsequently tested using multiple research methods. In general, the study indicates that the majority of private equity firms do not create sustainable value. More than 50% of the analyzed private equity backed companies were not able to outperform the market benchmark indices. On average, private equity backed firms were able to significantly outperform the market in the UK. However, they were unable to perform equally well on a European level.

The objective of this master's thesis is to contribute to the understanding of value creation in buyouts. The first part reviews two theoretical concepts that contribute to the explanation of various aspects in relation to value creation and presents a framework that identifies and links the different levers of value creation. The second part covers an empirical analysis that (i) examines the relative contribution of the most important of these levers (key value drivers) to the performance of leveraged buyouts (ii) and analyzes the impact of various factors such as transaction size, geographical region, entry year, exit type, holding period and entry mode on these levers and the resulting performance of buyouts. The data sample comprises a total of 42 realized European leveraged buyout investments with an entry enterprise value of at least &u8364150mn and the entry not dating back further than 1993. This study highlights, among other things, the predominance of the leverage effect as the key value driver in European leveraged buyouts and that private equity firms increasingly start to focus on the operating performance of their portfolio companies as a lever to drive value creation. Also, this work provides evidence that in today's competitive acquisition environment, multiple riding is far less common than in earlier years.

Value-creation in Middle Market Private Equity by John A. Lanier holistically examines the ecosystem relationships between middle market private equity firms and their portfolio companies. Small business is the job creating engine in the US economy, and consequently is a prime target market for private equity investment. Indeed, private equity backs over six of each 100 private sector jobs. Both the small businesses in which private equity firms invest, and the private equity firms making the investments, face inter- and intra-company fiduciary leadership challenges while implementing formulated strategy. The architecture of each private equity firm-portfolio company relationship must be uniquely crafted to capitalize on the projected return on investment that is memorialized in the investment thesis. Given the leveraged capital structure of portfolio companies, the cost of a misstep is problematic. Individual private equity professionals are typically members of multiple investment teams for the firm. Not only may each investment team have its own unique leadership style, but its diverse members have to assimilate styles for each team in which they participate relative to a specific portfolio company. Acquisitions and their subsequent integrations add exponential complexity for both private equity investment and portfolio company leadership teams; indeed, cultural integration ranks among the most chronic acquisition obstacles. Accordingly, the stakeholders of private equity transactions do well to embrace leadership best practices in applying value-creation toolbox best practices. The perspectives of both the private equity investment team and the portfolio company leadership team are within the scope of these chapters.

Based on a dataset of over 3,000 leveraged buyout transactions, including performance data, Nicolaus Loos analyses how financial investors create economic value through their investments. He shows that various exogenous factors with respect to timing, industry, public market as well as deal specific factors can statistically be related to a buyout deal's performance. He also provides evidence of a "GP effect" in leveraged buyouts, i.e. that certain characteristics of a Private Equity firm and its investment professionals as well as a firm's buyout strategy approach and certain buyout target characteristics are important success factors.

Based on multiple case studies of the transactions in China by private equity funds, this paper attempts to explore the value-creation capabilities of private equity funds at the transaction/deal level. Previous studies on financial performance of PE funds utilized data collected from publically traded companies in European/US markets. By measuring financial performance of both "pre- and post-transactions," these studies researched two questions: 1) Do buyout funds create value? 2) If they do, what are the sources of value creation? In general, studies conclude that private equity/buyout funds do create value at both the deal level and investor level. They also identified four possible sources of such value creation: 1) undervaluation, 2) leverage effect, 3) better governance, and 4) operational improvement.However, relatively little is known about the process of value creation. In this study, I attempt to fill that gap, revealing the "secret recipe" of value creation. By carefully looking into the process of value creation, this study suggests five propositions covering capabilities at 1) deal selection/screening, 2) deal structuring, 3) operational improvement, 4) investment exit, and 5) Top Management Team (TMT). These capabilities at private equity/buyout funds are critical factors for value creation. In a thorough review of the value-creation process, this paper hopes to: 1) Share real-life experiences and lessons learned on private equity transactions in China as a developing economy.2) Reveal the process of deal/transaction to observe measures taken place within deal/transaction for value creation. 3) Show how well-executed strategies and capabilities in deal selection/screening, deal structuring, operational improvement, and investment exit can still create value for private equity firms without financial leverage. 4) Share the experience of State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) reform participated in by private equity firms in China. This could provide valuable information for policy makers in China.

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity at Work provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model. Economist Eileen Appelbaum and Professor Rosemary Batt carefully evaluate the evidence—including original case studies and interviews, legal documents, bankruptcy proceedings, media coverage, and existing academic scholarship—to demonstrate the effects of private equity on American businesses and workers. They document that while private equity firms have had positive effects on the operations and growth of small and mid-sized companies and in turning around failing companies, the interventions of private equity more often than not lead to significant negative consequences for many businesses and workers. Prior research on private equity has focused almost exclusively on the financial performance of private equity funds and the returns to their investors. Private Equity at Work provides a new roadmap to the largely hidden internal operations of these firms, showing how their business strategies disproportionately benefit the partners in private equity firms at the expense of other stakeholders and taxpayers. In the 1980s, leveraged buyouts by private equity firms saw high returns and were widely considered the solution to corporate wastefulness and mismanagement. And since 2000, nearly 11,500 companies—representing almost 8 million employees—have been purchased by private equity firms. As their role in the economy has increased, they have come under fire from labor unions and community advocates who argue that the proliferation of leveraged buyouts destroys jobs, causes wages to stagnate, saddles otherwise healthy companies with debt, and leads to subsidies from taxpayers. Appelbaum and Batt show that private equity firms’ financial strategies are designed to extract maximum value from the companies they buy and sell, often to the detriment of those companies and their employees and suppliers. Their risky decisions include buying companies and extracting dividends by loading them with high levels of debt and selling assets. These actions often lead to financial distress and a disproportionate focus on cost-cutting, outsourcing, and wage and benefit losses for workers, especially if they are unionized. Because the law views private equity firms as investors rather than employers, private equity owners are not held accountable for their actions in ways that public corporations are. And their actions are not transparent because private equity owned companies are not regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thus, any debts or costs of bankruptcy incurred fall on businesses owned by private equity and their workers, not the private equity firms that govern them. For employees this often means loss of jobs, health and pension benefits, and retirement income. Appelbaum and Batt conclude with a set of policy recommendations intended to curb the negative effects of private equity while preserving its constructive role in the economy. These include policies to improve transparency and accountability, as well as changes that would reduce the excessive use of financial engineering strategies by firms. A groundbreaking analysis of a hotly contested business model, Private Equity at Work provides an unprecedented analysis of the little-understood inner workings of private equity and of the effects of leveraged buyouts on American companies and workers. This important new work will be a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, and the informed public alike.

Fully revised and updated to reflect changes in the private equity sector Building on and refining the content of previous editions, Introduction to Private Equity, Debt and Real Assets, Third Edition adopts the same logical, systematic, factual and long-term perspective on private markets (private equity, private debt and private real assets) combining academic rigour with extensive practical experience. The content has been fully revised to reflect developments and innovations in private markets, exploring new strategies, changes in structuring and the drive of new regulations. New sections have been added, covering fund raising and fund analysis, portfolio construction and risk measurement, as well as liquidity and start-up analysis. In addition, private debt and private real assets are given greater focus, with two new chapters analysing the current state of these evolving sectors. • Reflects the dramatic changes that have affected the private market industry, which is evolving rapidly, internationalizing and maturing fast • Provides a clear, synthetic and critical perspective of the industry from a professional who has worked at many levels within the industry • Approaches the private markets sector top-down, to provide a sense of its evolution and how the current situation has been built • Details the interrelations between investors, funds, fund managers and entrepreneurs This book provides a balanced perspective on the corporate governance challenges affecting the industry and draws perspectives on the evolution of the sector.

In the newly revised second edition of Venture Capital, Private Equity, and the Financing of Entrepreneurship, a dedicated team of researchers and professionals delivers an authoritative and comprehensive account of the world of active investing. This important work demonstrates how venture capitalists and private equity investors do business and create value for entrepreneurs, shareholders, and other stakeholders. The authors, drawing on decades of combined experience studying and participating in the private equity markets, discuss the players, dynamics, and the incentives that drive the industry. They also describe various possibilities for the future development of private equity. This latest edition is perfect for advanced undergraduate students of finance and business, as well as MBA students seeking an insightful and accessible textbook describing the private equity markets.