Performance of Buyout Funds Revisited?*

This article shows that publicly available data on buyout fund returns are sufficient to replicate the recent findings derived from superior but proprietary datasets. The average buyout fund outperforms the S&P 500. However, this study shows that buyout funds mainly invest in small and value companies; and the average buyout fund return is similar to that of small-cap indices and that of the oldest small-cap passive mutual fund ("DFA micro-cap"). If the benchmark is changed to small and value indices, and is levered up, the average buyout fund underperforms by 3.1% p.a.