A widely held view of private equity says that the buyout ownership model offers a way to run companies better than more traditional models. If true, this has high value in both private and social terms. One might therefore expect to see fee structures that are designed to reward private equity...

Much of the controversy around private equity has missed the point. It has focused on the relationship between private equity managers and the companies they control. Yet on average private equity managers do not seem to harm the companies they control. Meanwhile, a second key relationship has...

Almost exactly 30 years ago, a famous article by Michael Jensen in the Harvard Business Review predicted that private equity would “eclipse” the public corporation because it was a superior form of corporate ownership. Trends since 1989 seem to bear out Jensen's prediction. Much time and...