A familiar theme in the private equity world is lack of good data for understanding the true risk and return characteristics of the asset class. Lack of comprehensive and trusted data leaves the industry, including active and potential investors, underserved and thwarts our ability to learn more about private equity through research.
The University of Oxford has entered into a research partnership with scholars from the University of Chicago, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia in order to address this issue. The group has a particular interest in creating deeper understanding of private equity investment by harnessing the energies of researchers around the globe. As a consequence, a primary goal of the team is to work with organizations in the private equity industry to create a version of private equity data that can eventually be made available for other researchers.
In addition to insights on returns and risk, further outcomes of this unique research initiative are possible in the areas of an improved liquidity management and (over)commitments, reduction of certain risks accompanying this illiquid asset class, as well as increased price efficiency in the secondary market for fund interests due to more reliable forecasting.
The group is assessing the current state of data available and the shortcomings thereof. It is also in early conversations with institutional partners for possible collaboration. Insights into newly developed methodologies and general research results are likely to be published in due course, subject to joint approval of our partners.
The initiative is equipped with long-term funding by the UAI Foundation, a non-profit foundation devoted to the support of research in finance.
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Gregory Brown
Gregory W. Brown is the Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Scholar Professor of Finance at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research examines financial risk |
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Jennifer Conrad
Jennifer Conrad is the Dalton L. McMichael Sr. Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An award-winning teacher, Dr. Conrad teaches |
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Robert Harris
Robert S. Harris is the C. Stewart Sheppard Professor of Business at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He has served as Darden's Dean and prior to that as Chief Learning Officer and Vice |
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Tim Jenkinson
Tim J. Jenkinson is Professor of Finance at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and Director of Oxford Finance and the Oxford Private Equity Institute. He is a director of various companies |
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Steven Kaplan
Steven N. Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. He conducts research on issues in private equity and entrepreneurial |
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Ruediger Stucke
Ruediger R. Stucke is a Research Fellow in Finance and Economics at the Saïd Business School and the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, University of Oxford. As a Marie Curie Fellow of the |