We recently released a new report, "Public to Private Equity in the United States: A Long-Term Look," which is an update to a report we published in 2020.
A lot has changed since we last wrote about this topic, including the end of the period of “easy money,” a worsening environment for exits, increased access to capital for private companies, and a surge in capital needs for companies involved in artificial intelligence.
Further, initiatives are in motion to potentially make private equity more broadly available to retail investors - with the pros and cons that might come with that.
One statistic that stood out to me is that there are 592 unicorns valued at $1-3 billion versus 722 public companies with that valuation. So 45% of companies of that size are private. This would not have been the case a generation or two ago.
This report should be of interest to allocators and to students who want to understand the context and evolution of equity markets in the U.S. There are a lot of data.