Foundations increased allocations to alternative assets in 2011, with a particularly sizeable jump in private equity stakes, according to a report from investment manager Commonfund.

PEGCC provides a video that explains “What is Private Equity?”

Deal lawyer Chris Manderson offers some important tips PE firms should follow to avoid ending up in a situation like the one EIG Global Energy is dealing with at Chesapeake Energy Corp.

With November fast approaching, it should come as no surprise that President Obama’s proposal for “business tax reform” includes some elements sure to play well in Peoria.

PE pros aren’t terribly bullish outside the US nowadays.

One big uncertainty for the year ahead is the health of the private equity fundraising market. After all 2011 wasn’t what you might call the best of times. But then, it is not as if the industry really needs the money, as strange as that sounds. Here is a calculation I came across this morning [...]

The results are in!

This week we posed one of those big-issue questions. If you could do it all over again, would you still go into venture capital or private equity?

The question emerged as one of the most popular ever at peHUB. This week’s survey even beat our our Bin Laden question from May. However, our “do-over” poll didn’t surpass the query we posed in March, when we asked readers if they would buy the iPad 2.

One-quarter to one-half of today’s private equity general partnerships could disappear over the next half decade or so, predicts a new report from Triago, a placement agent. Poor returns from credit bubble vintages and smaller commitments to few managers are expected to drive this attrition, the firm states in its Triago Quarterly publication. Any long-term shakeout [...]

One bad apple really can spoil the whole barrel.

That was the gist of my thoughts after meeting an executive a few weeks ago. I was at a private equity conference where the exec, who is the president of a chemical company, loudly proclaimed that he wanted nothing to do with PE.

“Why?” I asked.

“They’re a–holes.”

I asked why he felt that way. In the 1970s, the exec and two college buddies started a chemical company in the Midwest. The company did very well, and, in 2007, his two friends wanted to cash out, he says. One wanted to retire and the other wanted to work part-time. The exec was willing to stay on another five years and manage the company, so he decided he would buy out the other two.

Two interesting charts I found today highlight the dramatic gap between top and bottom quartile fund returns. They also detail what might best be called the “V Curve” in recent fund performance (no longer the J Curve). Both are published by Pregin in the firm’s Private Equity Spotlight for August. The first (above) shows median [...]