EXPOSED! The shocking truth about private equity

RETICENCE IS NOT an attribute widely valued among the financial elite. But it was a characteristic surprisingly prevalent among several private equity firms when Euromoney approached them over the summer to talk about their business. There seems to be something of a siege mentality in the industry these days – the product of far from complimentary press coverage of some of private equity’s less than stellar investment decisions – as well as observations from some quarters that “of all the asset classes that went parabolic from 2004 to 2008 private equity funds may have done the best Icarus impression”.