The PE S-Curve, Stumbled Upon

Unexpectedly last week, I stumbled upon an S-Curve hidden between the lines of a study released by an established private equity funds of funds firm with a cautious introductory question: “do private equity funds sometimes just run out of steam?”

IRR Is Like Fish

IRR is like fish, when someone gets hold of it, it slips away. Hard to seize, hard to terminate – with incredible survival instinct, it tries to jump out of any bucket where it has been secluded.

Is Benchmarking IRRs against an IRR Benchmark an Apples for Apples Comparison?

This question, posed in a recent comment to my Fooled by IRRs post, deserves an answer in the form of a post. It has made me realize that the inaugural post of my blog, The Quartiles’ Oxymoron, was not as self-explanatory as I thought it was.

IRR Alpha Looks Bigger [More Subtly Fooled #1]

When a standard of measurement of returns allows close to 70% of investment managers (GPs) to claim their funds are first quartile performers (i.e. ranked in the top 25%) (1) – such as the case of the IRR – something is obviously wrong.

The Quartiles’ Oxymoron

I could not resist tying a rhetorical figure with financial mathematics. But there is no better description for IRR quartiles – an oxymoron.

In the private capital industry jargon, quartiles are ranked sets of IRR.

But, it is a well-established notion that IRR should not be used for ranking investments!