Another year of record PE distributions back to LPs? 2014 saw a mammoth $463.6 billion returned back to limited partners by private equity fund managers, capping off several years of steady increases in the annual total of distributions. But at $342.0 billion through the end of September, PE distributions in 2015 already look set to…

Recent PE Funds Have a Head Start As is to be expected, private equity funds of all vintages and geographies see their average distributed-to-paid-in multiples climb over time, as managers successfully liquidate even aging holdings after years of operational enhancements. The rates of increase in DPI multiples by vintage, however, can be split into two…

Larger PE Funds Continue to Realize Gains at Longer Horizons From the one-year mark to the 10-year, the horizon internal rates of return (IRRs) of private equity funds worldwide gradually advance from 8.2% to 13.1%. Breaking down fund performance by size bucket yields further insights, most notably that on a sufficiently long time horizon, funds…

U.S. PE firms pull back in Canada Last year saw a decade high of 201 U.S.-headquartered private equity firms invest in Canada, far outstripping the 129 domestic firms that were active in the same timeframe. Through the end of 1Q 2016, however, U.S. and Canadian PE firms are nearly evenly matched. This equalizing occurred as…

U.S. PE-backed hold times in the middle market remain high Reflecting the decline in private equity-backed exit activity observed across the whole market in the first quarter of 2016, U.S. PE-backed exits in the middle market were also quite low, with only 170 sales for nearly $13 billion recorded. After the banner run PE sellers…

PE Firms Looking Lower for Value As prices remain stubbornly high in many cases, a surge in overall private equity deal value in the reaches of the U.S. lower middle market is not wholly unexpected – on a quarterly basis, deal value was up by over 80% from 4Q while transactions jumped 14% in number….

Will 2016 Record More Add-ons Than Last Year? As a proportion of overall U.S. buyout activity, add-ons have gone from strength to strength. But the latest quarterly numbers have topped them all. In the first quarter of 2016, add-ons comprised 68% of all private equity buyout activity. While this percentage will likely decline as the…

98% of U.S. PE Funds Closed in Q1 Either Hit or Exceeded Target In the first quarter of 2016, 71 U.S. PE funds closed on a total of $51.8 billion in capital commitments. Of those 71 vehicles, no less than 98% either hit or exceeded their target. This proportion is unprecedented, even by the standards…

The Bigger, the Better: Private Equity Funds Still Trending Upward in Size Although there is a fair amount of quarterly variance in median private equity fund sizes, there has been a distinct trend upward since the end of 2013, with the closing quarter of 2015 cresting at just over $300 million across all PE fund…

As Investment Activity Slows, Competition for Quality Remains Fierce As March winds down, the first quarter of 2016 currently has seen around 700 private equity deals close in the U.S. Taking the total as 700, that completed deal count represents a drop of nearly 29% from the tally of 4Q 2015, which itself saw the…