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Aug 20, 2019

Private Equity Research Consortium Prepares Fund Holdings Data for Academic Analysis; Celebrates 10-year Partnership with Data Provider Burgiss

Chapel Hill, N.C., and Hoboken, N.J. (August 20, 2019) The Private Equity Research Consortium this fall plans to make fund holdings data available for academic research—a development that helps mark the 10-year partnership between data provider Burgiss and the Institute for Private Capital, an affiliate of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

“Private equity has become a significant source of investment capital in the global economy, and having access to a research-quality dataset containing over 70,000 fund holdings will let academics address important questions,” said Greg Brown, executive director of the Kenan Institute, professor of finance at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and one of six members of the Private Equity Research Consortium advisory board. “For the first time we’ll be able to study how factors such as investment size and industry selection impact the returns generated by private-equity firms on behalf of public pension funds, endowments, foundations and other institutional investors.”

Ten years ago, Burgiss, a Hoboken, New Jersey-based provider of private capital data and analytics to institutional investors, partnered with a group of leading academics to support the mission of promoting “a deep understanding of the role of private capital markets in the global economy.” The partnership led to the 2012 establishment of the Private Equity Research Consortium by scholars from business schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Chicago, Duke University, the University of Oxford and the University of Virginia.

The consortium gives professors and doctoral students an opportunity to conduct research using the Burgiss Manager Universe, which currently includes the complete transaction history of nearly 9,300 private-capital funds and funds of funds formed around the world from 1978 to present. Altogether the private equity, venture capital, private debt and real assets funds in the Burgiss Manager Universe represent more than $6.6 trillion in committed capital.

Since the consortium’s launch, academics have initiated some 50 research projects based on the Burgiss data. More than 20 published academic papers have addressed such questions as whether private equity firms outperform public equity markets (yes); whether over the last two decades top-performing private-equity firms have stayed top performers fund after fund (no); and how much subscription lines of credit are impacting private equity returns (quite a lot).

The consortium’s 19 current research fellows include Josh Lerner, professor of investment banking at Harvard Business School; Antoinette Schoar, professor of finance at MIT Sloan School Management; and Michael Weisbach, chair of the finance department at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.

For more information about the coming availability of fund holdings data for academic research, contact research@burgiss.com.

Press contact:

MacKenzie Babb
919.843.6021
MacKenzie_Babb@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

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