The PEPD tracks the performance of over 1,200 US venture capital and buyout funds formed since 1969 and over 425 European private equity funds formed since 1980.
Returns are net to investors after fees and carried interest.
One reason for this is that exits via IPO have less of a direct effect on buyout funds than on venture funds. These results represent the net return to investors in private equity funds and represent both realized and unrealized performance. As the market is less sanguine about the high valuations that have driven these returns to their unimaginable highs, it is not hard to see that short term returns in the first quarter of 2000 should come down to more historically reasonable levels. The fact that so much of the returns were driven by unrealized portfolio valuations, we firmly expect one-year rates of returns will fall in 2000. Even as the market has been receptive to venture IPOs in the first quarter of 2000, the extreme valuations seem to have come back down to earth.