An Empirical Analysis of Private Equity, Listed Private Equity and Public Equity

Abstract

It is not a secret that the world of Private Equity is growing year by year, with an immense upwards trend and that the willingness of understanding how Private Equity as an alternative capital raising strategy can be used by companies which do not want to go public and get financed by Public Equity.

The underlying paper investigates the world of Private Equity, Listed Private Equity and Public Equity. Regarding transparency of data, the comparability of Public Equity to Listed Private Equity provides way better results than comparing Public Equity to Private Equity.

Due to the listing of the firms, the disclosure requirements need to be fulfilled. The GLPE Index illustrates and underlines the effectiveness of Listed Private Equity as a financing source. The GLPE Index contains 40 to 75 listed Private Equity firms which mostly invest Private Equity in firms that are not listed.

However - The top ten constituents of this index show their diversification considering the companies they have invested in and their performance, the countries in which the Headquarter are located and the performance of these funds. One can see clearly that 2021 was an extra ordinary year for all of them. They achieved returns and performance better than indices like the MSCI World and S&P 500.