Private Equity Demystified

This book deals with risk capital provided for established firms outside the stock market, private equity, which has grown rapidly over the last three decades, yet is largely poorly understood. Although it has often been criticized in the public mind as being short termist and having adverse consequences for employment, in reality this is far from the case. Here, John Gilligan and Mike Wright dispel some of the biggest myths and misconceptions about private equity.The book provides a unique and authoritative source from a leading practitioner and academic for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers that explains in detail what private equity involves and reviews systematic evidence of what the impact of private equity has been. Written in a highlyaccessible style, the book takes the reader through what private equity means, the different actors involved, and issues concerning sourcing, checking out, valuing, and structuring deals. The various themes from the systematic academic evidence are highlighted in numerous summary vignettes placed alongside the text that discuss the practical aspects. The main part of the work concludes with an up-to-date discussion by the authors, informed commentators on the key issues in the lively debateabout private equity. The book further contains summary tables of the academic research carried out over the past three decades across the private equity landscape including: the returns to investors, economic performance, impact on R&D and employees, and the longevity and life-cycle of private equitybacked deals.

Mike Wright was one of the towering figures in the field of private equity. He pioneered rigorous data analysis of buyouts and private equity a long time before it became fashionable to do so and stimulated a vast body of research on the subject as a consequence. This book exemplifies the major contribution that Mike made to the field., If you are looking for a book that provides you with a full picture of the structure and economics of private equity there is no finer source. The text covers the history of the field, its economic role, a balanced view of its merits and results, and a great deal of vital information on how deals are done and investments made to prosper. Its bang up to date with lots of new content especially on the recent explosion of the use of fund leverage. Simply excellent., As private equity's influence continues to swell all of our lives are now inextricably linked to the asset class. It has never been more important to remove the barriers and complexities private equity often seeks to hide behind. Private Equity Demystified is therefore essential reading for each and every one of us to ensure this asset class is kept in check., Demystifying the private equity industry - specifically leveraged buyouts - is no small feat, requiring exceptional expertise, powerful insight and great depths of knowledge. Gilligan and Wright display it all, as they take the reader through what is a thorough explanatory guide that Invest Europe recommends most highly., Much is written about private equity and a lot of it, even the articles in certain major newspapers, can be extremely superficial or ill informed. This publication is the antithesis of such coverage of the subject.The bookis thorough, considered and balanced. John Gilligan's experience as a practitioner and the huge body of data compiled by CMBORunder the leadership of the late Mike Wright are blended togetherto make it very readable despite tackling quite complex concepts. This book should be a must-read for people aspiring to either work in private equity or cover private equity news.

John Gilligan has worked in the private equity and venture capital industry for over 30 years. He started his career in 1988 at 3i Group plc as a financial analyst. He was a Corporate Finance Partner of Deloitte and latterly BDO for over twenty years. He is the Director of the Oxford Saïd Finance Lab at Saïd Business School, a non-executive director and Investment Committee member of Big Issue Invest, one of the largest social impact investors in the UK. Heis also a Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business school and has degrees from Southampton University, Nottingham University, and London Business School.Mike Wright pioneered research into management buy-outs and private equity. He founded the Centre for Management Buy-out Research, CMBOR, in 1986. He was Professor of Entrepreneurship at Imperial College Business School and Chair of the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies. He published extensively on entrepreneurial ownership mobility and finance in leading academic journals and has over 75,000 Google Scholar citations. His books include Accelerators: Successful VentureCreation and Growth (2018), The Routledge Companion to Management Buy-outs (2018), Student Start-Ups: The New Landscape of Academic Entrepreneurship (2019), and How to Get Published in the Top Management Journals (2019). He was a member of the British Venture Capital Association Research AdvisoryCommittee.