Public Private Equity: How the Listing of PE Firms is Shaping Investment Behavior
Advisor: Dr. Sara Boni
Type: Master's Thesis
Start: asap
Overview
Evergreen funds represent a rapidly growing segment of private markets. They offer semi-liquid access to private markets, differing significantly from traditional closed-end drawdown funds. While evergreen funds have existed in real estate for decades, their recent expansion into private equity and credit has attracted attention from both institutional and retail investors. These funds allow continuous capital inflows and periodic redemptions, making them appealing for investors seeking flexibility and simplified portfolio management.
Despite their growing popularity, academic research on evergreen funds remains scarce. Key questions include how evergreen funds manage liquidity, deploy capital, and perform relative to traditional drawdown funds.
This thesis aims to provide descriptive and comparative insights into evergreen funds using publicly available data. The focus will be on analyzing fund characteristics, liquidity management, and performance metrics, and contrasting these with traditional drawdown funds where possible.
Objective
Literature Review
The first objective is to review and synthesize existing research on private equity performance, manager incentives, and organizational changes resulting from public ownership. By integrating insights from the literature on asset management, compensation design, and PE firm structure, the thesis aims to develop a clear conceptual framework that explains why and how public listings may alter investment strategies. This part will clarify mechanisms related to:
- Shifts in incentives from long-term carry to short-term earnings visibility,
- The growing importance of scalable, fee-generating activities,
- Changes in internal labor markets and skill allocation within PE firms,
- Potential implications for deal selection, risk-taking, and performance.
Descriptive Analysis
The second objective is to provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of how listed PE firms differ from private ones in the deals they undertake. Using deal-level datasets (e.g., proprietary LP data, PitchBook, Orbis, FactSet), the thesis will document empirical patterns related to:
- Deal size and capital deployment,
- Type of transactions (e.g., buyout vs. venture capital),
- Industry and geographic focus,
- Holding periods and exit routes,
- Basic performance metrics where available.
Requirements
- Interest in private markets and fund structures.
- Strong analytical skills and ability to work with structured and unstructured data.
- Experience of working in Excel and possibly Python/ R/ etc. for data collection, visualization and analysis.
Suggested Literature
- Braun, Reiner, Nils Dorau, Tim Jenkinson, and Daniel Urban, 2025, Size, returns, and value: Do private equity firms allocate capital according to manager skill? The Journal of Finance, forthcoming.
- Braun, Reiner, Tim Jenkinson, and Christoph Schemmerl, 2020, Adverse selection and the performance of private equity co-investments, Journal of Financial Economics 136, 44-62
Braun, Reiner, Tim Jenkinson, and Ingo Stoff, 2017, How persistent is private equity performance? Evidence from deal-level data, Journal of Financial Economics 123, 273-291.
Contact & Application
If you are interested in writing your thesis on this topic, please indicate this in your application. Please note that this topic can be expanded and/or taken in other directions depending on the student's own interests and ideas.