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.