On November 20, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda called for the opening of 401(k) retirement savings to private markets.  He observed that diversification has grown increasingly difficult to achieve through public securities alone, and that private investments (in structures such as …

In leveraged buyouts (LBOs), a private equity (PE) sponsor acquires controlling ownership of a target company, typically by using a significant amount of bank loans. In a new study, we focus on a controversial issue: Many PE sponsors have prior …

Carried interest is a special, or disproportionate-to-ownership, allocation of profits to the managers of a private equity (PE) or hedge fund partnership. While fund managers typically own about 2 percent of a fund, carried interest may allocate about 20 percent …

Since the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, the corporate finance markets have been dramatically transformed. Most notable has been the rise of non-traditional providers of debt finance such as private credit funds, which now aggressively compete with traditional finance providers …

Large-scale private equity buyouts, and the increasingly gargantuan financial firms that spearhead them, are commonly regarded as staples of today’s financialized corporate economy. However, this has not always been the case and, up until recently, private equity firms and funds …

For most of its history, the private equity industry was largely left alone by securities regulators. A basic assumption underlying this approach was that private equity fund investors are sophisticated and should therefore be able to engage in effective private …

The growth of the private equity industry over the past two decades has been nothing short of extraordinary. Yet research on the formation and governance of these funds – including the rights and obligations of general partners and limited partners …

Over the past 30 years, private equity firms and hedge funds have reshaped the landscape of corporate ownership. By 2022, firms under private equity management employed over 11 million people, nearly 10 percent of the U.S. workforce, while, in 2021, …

It is de rigueur to label everything as sustainable – including in private equity. In a new working paper, we examine the claims of the top 100 private equity firms in the United States as to their committment to ESG. …