What Your Private Equity Picks Say About You

A CIO’s skill in fund selection is one of the most important factors in determining private equity returns, research has claimed.

An analysis of more than 12,000 investments by 630 limited partners (LPs) found that skill was more likely to be a factor in high returns than luck or preferential access to managers.

Daniel Cavagnaro and Yingdi Wang of California State University, and Berk Sensoy and Michael Weisbach of Ohio State University studied venture capital and buyout fund investments made between 1991 and 2006.

“Our results imply that an increase of one standard deviation in skill leads to about a 3% increase in internal rate of return [IRR],” the quartet wrote. “The magnitude of this effect suggests that variation in skill is an important driver of institutional investors’ returns.”

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The effect was even greater—5%—with venture capital investments, the researchers said. LPs performed consistently well or consistently poorly in private equity fund selection, implying “differential skill” rather than pure luck.

The researchers also singled out first-time funds in an effort to analyze the effect to which some general partners only allow their “favorite” LPs to invest. This analysis showed that skill in fund selection was still an important factor in achieving desired returns.

“Systematic differences in returns across LPs do not appear to occur only because those LPs have better access to the best private equity funds,” the researchers reported.

“Better access does appear to help explain some of the superior performance, such as that of endowments’ investments in venture capital during the 1990s,” the authors concluded. “However, the evidence of some LPs’ systematic outperformance goes well beyond established venture capital partnerships during this period, and appears to exist in first-time funds, in buyout funds, and in other time periods as well.”

Read the research paper, “Measuring Institutional Investors’ Skill from Their Investments in Private Equity.”

Investors representing more than $13 trillion have called on 20 of the world’s biggest economies to work with them to tackle climate change.

Ahead of the upcoming G20 meeting—a forum for the governments and central banks of 19 major countries and the European Union—130 consultants, managers, and asset owners told policymakers they had “a responsibility to work with the private sector” to achieve goals set last year as part of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Signatories included the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, New York State Common Retirement Fund, Denmark’s ATP, the BT Pension Scheme, California State Teachers’ Retirement System, New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

“The Paris Agreement on climate change provides a clear signal to investors that the transition to the low-carbon, clean energy economy is inevitable and already underway,” the letter stated. “Governments have a responsibility to work with the private sector to ensure that this transition happens fast enough to catalyze the significant investment requires to achieve the Paris agreement’s goals.”

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These objectives included keeping global average temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of the century.

Investors called for policymakers to join and ratify the Paris agreement this year, as well as implement the recommendations of the 2015 Global Investor Statement on Climate Changes. These recommendations included providing “stable, reliable, and economically meaningful” carbon pricing and supporting innovation and development in low-carbon technology.

The coalition also requested support for the United Nation’s plan to double global investment in clean energy by 2020 and for the work of the G20 green finance study group.

Finally, the investors called on G20 members to prioritize their countries’ contributions to achieving the Paris agreement’s goals, including rulemaking by national financial regulators to require disclosure of material climate risks.

“Governments must ratify the Paris agreement swiftly and have a responsibility to implement policies that drive better disclosure of climate risk, curb fossil fuel subsidies, and put in place strong pricing signals,” said Stephanie Pfeifer, CEO of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

The full letter and list of signatories can be found on the IIGCC’s website.