Private Equity Bashing Circus?

The quality of argument about the benefits of Private Equity investment has reached a dangerously low level when a commentator in a leading British Daily Newspaper can call the discussions a 'private equity bashing circus'.
We would like to point out, however, that two crucial points hardly got mentioned so far.
One concerns the distributive effects the growing presence of private equity. A narrow group of managers in the private equity industry reaps the benefits of ever-growing buy-outs on the back on a compensation structure that has originally been designed for managers of (much smaller) venture capital funds. No one seems to know how much the numbers involved are but the combination of (over?) generous management fees of around 2 % p.a. and a profit sharing of 20 % above (unspecified?) hurdle rates let the compensation available to managers or public companies pale in comparison.
Growing concentration of company ownership in a small number of opaque management companies that are nothing but conglomerate holding companies is also contrary to the aim of a wider spread of company ownership that should be a focus in a democratic society.

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