Abstract:
The paper investigates how Private Equity (PE) ownership influences out-performance of a high-growth firm, and whether it differs from the effect of two other important types of financial investors: banks and non-bank financial firms. We transform the levered return on equity into a unlevered return and empirically test on some 30 thousand high growth European firms whether Private Equity' or other financial investors' ownership matter. The empirical analysis suggests three major conclusions. The shareholding by PE and bank has influence on out-performance but only if either the PE investor or the bank hold between 75 to 100 percent of firm's shares. The direction of the effect is opposite. PE has a positive, while bank has a negative influence on firm's out-performance. We also show that the out-performance of a firm with shareholding of non-bank financial firms up to 50 percent is lower than the out-performance of a firm that does not have such ownership.