In The News

Buyout firms sign up to share data

by Ayesha Javed, April 5 2012

The private equity firms' data will be kept under "tight security"

A group of 15 buyout firms have joined forces to launch a new database of private equity transaction and fund information in an attempt to help demonstrate private equity’s economic impact.
 
The Private Capital Research Institute, an organization that compiles industry data for use in academic studies, has secured the agreements from the buyout firms and has teamed up with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which conducts research for government agencies, non-profit agencies and corporations.

The NORC has experience handling sensitive data, said Harvard Business School Professor Josh Lerner, who heads the PCRI project. The PCRI said the data would be “anonymized" and kept under “strictly controlled circumstances and with tight security”.

Information from the firms will be used along with data from commercial providers that formed the skeleton of PCRI's database, which aims to promote academic research of private capital. PCRI is a non-profit organization funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Prominent buyout firms that have signed up with PCRI include Apollo Global Management, Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, First Reserve and Clayton Dubilier & Rice. Other firms on the list include Actis, Apax Partners, Berkshire Partners, Court Square Capital Partners, General Atlantic, Kohlberg & Co, New Mountain Capital, Riverside, Saybrook Corporate Opportunity Funds and Thomas H Lee Partners.

Lerner said that collating a thorough data set would help to address policy questions about private equity as well as providing better information for limited partners’ – private equity investors – investment committees.

The news comes after news this week that Europe’s private equity trade bodies are in talks to combine their data, in a move that looks set to create the industry’s first credible pan-European database.