You have a private equity fund. And you say to yourself, I have arrived.
But, have you?
Because, in fact, it may take you longer to arrive.
First things first. Let me explain what a private equity fund is (but please bear with me – we will be going a little technical here). It is typically a limited partnership, in which the private equity firm acts as the general partner and accredited investors fund the investments of the partnership. According to Daniel R. Solin in his book, The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own, the average returns on equity funds, net of fees, were 3% below that of the S&P 500 (an index that consists of 500 stocks weighted by market value, often incorrectly used as a benchmark for the performance of the US stock market) and fees were a whopping 6% a year.
The fraud (it is fraud) does not start, or end, with private equity funds.