Size Doesn’t Matter in PE Fund Performance Over the Long Term

Despite the dueling claims that smaller PE fund managers lack sophistication or sufficient scale, or that larger fund managers lack the nimbleness and operational focus and expertise necessary to improve portfolio companies, returns across different sizes of funds are relatively uniform in the long term. 10-year horizon IRRs (which use changes in NAV in addition to industry-wide net contributions over time as the cash flow inputs in an IRR calculation) for PE funds of any size bucket are between 10% and 11%...