Private equity firms deploy an enormous amount of capital into the private capital markets. The www.PrivateEquityInfo.com database currently tracks 17,320 funds operated by private equity firms. Collectively, these funds currently have $3.4 trillion in assets under management.
Recently, a subscriber to our service called to ask about private equity investments in the Oil & Gas sector. He wanted to look at the data from a different angle than our normal use-case and found he was unable to slice the data the way he wanted through our existing database filters online.
Fortunately, we also perform custom research for clients and were able to get the data he needed, the way he wanted, by querying the database directly, and differently than the available filters on our front-end search page. This gave our customer interesting (and accurate) data catered specifically to his needs for his project.
Private equity firms that operate private funds with at least $150 million in assets must file a Form PF (“Private Fund”) with the SEC. Individual firm filings are confidential and are therefore not covered under the Freedom of Information Act. I know, because I asked.
That said, the SEC publishes quarterly statistics about these private equity funds in aggregate. Here are a few interesting points from the SEC report:
While most private equity firms invest in privately-held companies, on occasion PE firms will hold positions in publicly-traded stocks. Currently, our database shows 405 private equity firms collectively hold 938 separate investments in 730 unique U.S. publicly-traded companies.
Top 10 Cities with the Most Private Equity Firms
I recently spoke to Kristy DelMuto with the private equity firm LLR Partners. With some minor edits, the text below captures our conversation surrounding LLR’s Collaborate initiative.
LLR is a lower middle market private equity firm, based in Philadelphia. We primarily invest in growth technology or tech-enabled service businesses operating in the education, healthcare, financial technology, industrial technology, security and software industries with revenue between $10 – $100 million. We make equity investments between $15 and $100 million.
At the core, we look for growth companies with strong management teams who want to partner with us to create value over the long-term.
The map below shows the concentration of private equity firms across various U.S. states, with obvious concentrations in New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Florida (in that order).
The trending private equity investment sectors for September 2018 are highlighted below with a few example transactions.
I probed our private equity database to discover non-U.S. private equity firms that have made investments in U.S.-based companies. I wanted to know the primary industries of interest for these international financial sponsors over the past 12 months. The industry themes are shown below.
Our database at PrivateEquityInfo.com currently shows 259 U.S.-based private equity firms with current portfolio company investments in European countries. Of these European portfolio companies, 50% are concentrated in just 2 countries (UK & Germany).
Industry Trends Report
