2011 was the year private equity managers learned to accept that what they got even if it wasn't always quite what they wanted. Investors talk about what they want and need in 2012.

Two scholars affiliated with the Center for European Economic Research, drawing upon European data between 2000 and 2008, maintain that PE backed companies do not suffer from higher bankruptcy rates than their control group of comparable companies. Their paper also addresses the relationship between bankruptcy risk on the one hand and the syndicated (or, conversely, the stand-alone) nature of a PE deal. It finds no significant relationship.

In spite of what the media might have us believe, it isn't quite the end of the world as we know it, particularly as it applies to European private equity.

A recent study, in which Steve Kaplan of the University of Chicago collaborated with Bob Harris of the University of Virginia and Tim Jenkinson of Oxford, addressed fund-level performance using data from Burgiss Group. Kaplan said this study indicates that “private equity has performed remarkably well.” In the period 1990 to 2008, a dollar in PE returned to investors 300 to 400 basis points a year more than a dollar in the equities of the S&P 500, net of all fees. This, if accepted, still leaves the question of the relationship of PE funds/firms to one another. Are they all the same?

If every fund is number one, then no one is number one. Irina Zeltser examines performance rankings in private equity.

EisnerAmper LLP's latest edition of “Pulse of Private Equity” finds that PE firms in the second half of 2011 are becoming “more sober about the potential for transactions,” compared to last year or earlier this year.

Angel investors are returning to provide seed-stage capital and job growth. slowly recovering after the financial crises of 2008 and 2009.

Managers were asked: “other than delivering expected performance, what is the greatest challenge in satisfying investors?” The results were: getting investors comfortable with infrastructure, 22 percent; providing satisfactory performance attribution data, 19 percent; providing broader education/consulting, 18 percent; providing satisfactory risk analytics, 11 percent; other, 28 percent. The residual answer produced more favorable replies, then, than did any of the pre-scripted answers.

Following the ongoing financial crises that began in 2008, financial services providers are changing the way that they do business. Preqin looks at the shifting role of the consultant and the effect that change is having on the private equity industry.

Even against the backdrop of a global recession, the top 50 fastest growing companies in the USA averaged growth rates between 3,893% and 40,882% in the three years to the start of 2011.  These are rates of return which more than compensate the investor for the risk of making high-growth-young-company-investments.  For some investors, alternative markets [...]

Cyril Demaria, a partner at Tiaré Investment Management in Zurich, and a former portfolio manager at Maaf Gestion, has written a book, Introduction to Private Equity, John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, N.J., 2010, 244 pp., $49.95. The subject matter is named well enough in the title. I’ll only add that Demaria uses the term “private [...]

The second in a three-part series on private equity from SEI shows that alpha is a bit slippery these days.

It is true by definition that the crowd is right in the midst of a trend, and wrong at the moment when that trend is about to reverse itself.  In the Asia Pacific region, broad confidence in opportunities for private equity surely constitutes by now, a trend, even a parade. Whether it is the sort [...]

Roughly half of the private equity limited partners questioned in a June 2011 survey said they plan to commit more capital to PE funds this year than they did last.

Institutional investors have great expectations for private equity, and the right fund managers, willing to meet their “increasingly exacting standards,” will be in a position to listen to “capture part of the growing flow of assets” in that direction.

You and your neighbour are good friends and, like Dagwood Bumstead and Herb Woodley, you share tools all the time. Then one day it occurs to you that Herb has lots of tools that he isn't using, or using well. Why not, you say, make an offer on his garage and its contents. Of course, Herb will have his own terms and conditions – and maybe extract a price if the deal falls through.

Alpha isn't always where you'd expect it, especially in the crowded private equity field.

Fees for alternative investments, particularly for private equity, are a long-standing issue that likely will never be resolved, but investors and managers alike keep trying, according to a recent survey by Preqin.

If everyone is the best, then no one is the best. A look at private equity performance.

Alternatives are increasingly being viewed as a key component of portfolio construction for wealth management firms - good news for hedge funds. But there's competition from private equity.

According to the latest research, confidence in family office investing is back.

More stringent than ever, investors are demanding more for the same or less of private equity funds. Whether they'll relent remains to be seen.

A recent report on the private equity landscape paints a less-optimistic picture of where private equity is headed two-plus years after the financial crisis.

Irina Zeltser attended the US Super Returns conference, held recently in Boston, where the future of the general partner business model was up for debate.

Private equity shops are finally smelling opportunity in the U.S. commercial real estate market. The question is whether the roses they smell are as sweet as they think, or if they just plain stink.

Many look at headlines proclaiming the latest and greatest recoveries or achievements in investing as the ultimate contrarian indicator. Could all of private equity's awesome accolades of late be saying the same thing?

Investors and managers alike are moving back toward the smorgasbord of different types of alternative investments that is private equity, but there are still signs that indigestion and tummy aches may come back to haunt.

It's almost summer, yet neither the ice-cold hockey rinks nor the sweaty basketball courts have relented on their highly paid inmates. Maybe the owners of these highly salaried prize fighters know something... and share it with fellow owners.

It's tough to argue that private equity and real estate aren't the most intuitive investment this days, but a recent report suggests institutional investors are seeing some promise.

Private equity managers arguably bit off more than they could chew in the pre-crisis, credit-crunch world. Now, several years on, PE-funded companies have managed to survive, mutate and thrive, according to a new report.

Times are tough for VCs. The National Venture Capital Association recently found out exactly how tough. (Hint: "Fund raising skills" are now a must-have for CEOs.)

The mid-2000s were quite the party for the private equity crowd. But the morning after, they woke up to too much debt on too few revenues, highballs combined with high-balled growth. So who gets to clean up the mess?

Angel investing is an acquired taste that isn't generally described as an "alternative investment." But as a recent survey of both angels and VC funds illustrates, angel investing is really no different than an institutional investor making "direct" private equity investments.

Despite being raised in different homes, it turns out that funds of private equity funds face some of the same genetic realities as their hedge fund brethren.

After last week's mega-deal, private equity firm Carlyle Group solidified its position as the world's most formidable barbarian at the gates of the world's private companies. But does heft equal returns?

Sovereign Wealth Funds are some of the biggest behemoths around. So why would they ever think they could move around undetected?

One of the world's largest institutional investors in private equity funds recently invited academics to study it's decades' worth of secret fund data. What those researchers found might surprise you.