All articles by Jeff Hooke

Private equity underperforms S&P 500

Private equity funds have failed to beat the S&P 500 over the last 20 years, according to recent research, and as a result finance professionals have been left pondering how private equity became a trillion-dollar industry The question now is whether disappointed investors shift from the private equity (PE) to a more flexible approach. Academics Steven Kaplan (University of Chicago), Antoinette Schoar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Ludovic Phalippou (University of Amsterdam) and Oliver Gottschalg (HEC Paris, a business school) have studied PE returns (net of fees), and produced detailed analyses that covered hundreds of funds over the last 20 years