PCRI
 

 

Press Release

Leading Managers To Contribute Data to Effort To Advance Understanding Of Private Capital

More Firms to Participate in Breakthrough Initiative to Analyze Private Capital’Äôs Global Economic Impact

CAMBRIDGE MA ’Äì April 4, 2012 ’Äì The Private Capital Research Institute (PCRI) , a non-profit organization that works to further the understanding of the economic impact of private capital through independent academic studies, announced today that fifteen leading private capital firms have agreed in principle to contribute transaction and fund-level information to a data platform being developed by the PCRI. The initial group of alternative asset management managers, buyout funds, development capital investors, and growth equity investors includes Actis, Apax Partners, Apollo Global Management, Berkshire Partners, the Carlyle Group, Court Square Capital Partners, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, First Reserve Corporation, General Atlantic, KKR & Co., Kohlberg & Company, New Mountain Capital, The Riverside Company, Saybrook Corporate Opportunity Funds, and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

The PCRI is an organization led by Harvard Business School Professor Josh Lerner and funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. PCRI’Äôs primary goal is to produce high quality academic research on the private capital industry based in large part on the comprehensive, centralized academic databases of private capital activity that the PCRI is building. Working with The Brookings Institution, the PCRI hopes to disseminate the research findings to policy makers and the public at large.

Professor Lerner stated: ’ÄúCurrently, the main barrier to performing high quality academic research on the private capital industry is the quality of information about transactions and funds. There are significant discrepancies across existing data-bases, which make it impossible to replicate and verify research studies. In addition, many researchers have difficulty accessing these data-bases. The PCRI seeks to address this problem. Once our data bases are constructed, the PCRI will make this data available only to academic researchers in anonymized form under strictly controlled circumstances and with tight security.’Äù

Professor Lerner added: ’ÄúWe welcome the data from these firms and look forward to securing data contributions from more firms around the world in coming months.’Äù

The PCRI will store the data behind a secure firewall at a research institution. The databases will not be publicly available. Academics will need to submit proposals and get approval prior to gaining access to the data. Researchers will only be able to analyze the data using software available on site and only permitted to download empirical results.

In addition to these private capital firms, the PCRI has already gained the support of a number of global investing organizations, the Institutional Limited Partners Association and several major data providers.

About the PCRI:
The PCRI is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation formed to sponsor leading academics and experts to share, collaborate, and disseminate research on private capital. For more information about the PCRI, please contact Josh Lerner at jlerner@hbs.edu or Leslie Jeng at leslie.jeng@gmail.com.

 
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