Publications

Report | October 2010

This report discusses Asian private equity as an asset class from an institutional investor perspective. It is based on surveys with leading limited partners (LPs) and general partners (GPs) in Asian private equity. The two INSEAD-AXA Private Equity Surveys were conducted from April to June 2010.

The first part of our report offers an introduction to Asian private equity from an LP perspective, starting with a brief summary of its history, followed by a discussion of recent developments in the industry, including the increasing flow of funds into this asset class.

The report then takes a brief look at historic returns and risk (as expressed in return variability) from a portfolio manager’s perspective. The authors highlight the high variance in returns across the asset class, which makes manager selection the critical element in a portfolio of Asian private equity funds.

The core segment of the report focuses on a selected group of top LPs and their experience with Asian private equity. They have the resources, experience and brand names that allow them to select and (most importantly) access top managers, and hence are best positioned to generate above-average returns for meaningful allocations. Indeed their portfolios are expected to yield gross multiples of around two times invested capital, well above the industry average.

The authors compare their actual returns with their return expectations, specifically the required risk premium over Western private equity, and discuss the performance drivers in their portfolios. To complement the responses from our selected LPs and to provide a balanced perspective, they extended our survey to a group of top GPs, proposed by our LPs. These represent to a large extent a shortlist of the LP’s portfolios and include some of the most respected names in the industry. As such, they outperform the industry average and LP portfolios as a whole.

Finally, the authors asked both GPs and LPs about the overall outlook for the industry, and also asked our investors to share with us their portfolio allocation plans.