Publicly Traded Private Equity: An Empirical Investigation

A major problem in studying the performance of private equity is the lack of reliable market data, or the lack of liquidity, the most instruments available in this growing market segment. However, there are an increasing number of publicly traded private equity (PTPE) vehicles. We have found a total of 229 listed instruments whose core business investments are in private equity. After imposing constraints with respect to availability of market prices, capitalization, trading volume, vid-aks-spread, and trade-continuity, we get a sample of 124 instruments. The performance of these ...