Performance of Private Equity Funds

Do private equity funds beat the public equity market, as implied by allocations of large investors such as university endowments, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds? In his June 2025 paper entitled “Apples and Oranges: Benchmarking Games and the Illusion of Private Equity Outperformance”, Ludovic Phalippou updates private equity fund performance, focusing on 2000-2019 vintage funds that are past the investment phase and have little selection bias. He examines the reputation of private equity as a market-beating alternative asset. Using MSCI Burgiss data through the end of 2024, he finds that: (more…)