Private Equity: Value Creation and Performance

This article serves as a comprehensive overview of the performance of private equity transactions. It gathers information from an analysis of 10,328 private equity deals, which include 3,296 pure buyout transactions. It introduces a new perspective for the analysis of the key drivers of value creation of private equity. It then isolates the impact of market timing, leverage, and operational improvements on transactions returns before focusing on the transactions in the financial institution industry. This article also provides indirect evidence that shows the possibility of operational improvements being the primary value drivers in other industries as well.