Each quarter State of Michigan Retirement System issues a Private Equity Review that provides a deep dive into the pension plan’s PE portfolio. In this article will highlight some of the major takeaways from the document and discuss why Market Lens users value the insights found in the review.
Real-time data on how pension plans are committing capital for private fund managers offers valuable insight into how the market is trending, what strategies are popular with investors, and which of their competitors are finding fundraising success.
While keeping tabs on recent commitment activity is valuable intel for GPs, forward-looking insights give fund managers actionable data points. Knowing the LPs with clear intentions to commit to their strategies can serve as the foundation for planning and executing a successful fundraise.
Each new fundraising environment brings new challenges for fund managers. After contending with the challenges of virtual fundraising of 2020, GPs are now navigating a market of hybrid fundraises and stiff competition from firms launching new strategies and other coming back to market faster in order to take advantage of LP demand for private markets exposure.
As US-based pension plans strive to put capital to work in the private markets, one area has increasingly come into focus as a destination for new commitments: their home states.
Historically, an overwhelming percentage of capital invested in private funds has flowed to companies located in a short list of states: places like California, Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and Texas.
In an effort to change this dynamic and stimulate their local economies, state pension plans are increasingly issuing RFPs for in-state investment programs.
What will the introduction of retail capital mean for the private fund industry?
In the twelve months that have passed since the U.S. Department of Labor’s June 2020 announcement clarifying and confirming that 401k plans could deploy capital to the private markets, retail capital has been top of mind for investor relations and business development teams across the private markets industry.
Opinions and insights from institutional investors on the fees charged by private fund managers can be valuable feedback for GPs preparing to launch new funds as well as those seeking re-ups from existing investors.
In a panel discussion held during a recent eVestment-hosted event, Evolving Private Markets: Exploring the LP/GP Relationship of Tomorrow, we asked investors from three large pension plan operators for their thoughts on the state of fees in the private markets.
Private fund managers often justify their fees by pointing to their track records and claiming that by investing in private companies they are delivering superior returns that are uncorrelated to public markets. But according to research from Vanguard using data from 1980 through 2012, only the top quartile of private equity returns have materially outperformed public markets.
Public market equivalent (PME) analysis gives context to a fund manager’s performance by comparing it against a public market index. It provides a more measurable, continuous benchmark compared to blind pool peer performance datasets.
eVestment Private Markets and its suite of SaaS-based solutions for GPs, LPs, and advisors is now officially part of Nasdaq Private Fund Solutions.
Nasdaq Private Fund Solutions is a technology-enabled ecosystem of portfolio analytics & services, market intelligence, and fund secondaries solutions built to empower GPs and LPs as they navigate increasing complexity across the investment lifecycle.
Verger Capital Management uses TopQ+ to enhance their due diligence process and derive meaningful information from data.
Each month, eVestment aggregates reported commitments from the public pension plan investors tracked by our market intelligence tool, Market Lens, to provide insights on the asset classes and fund managers to which and to whom these investors are committing capital.
With data through Q1-21 now collected, the March 2021 report highlighted a bumper quarter for private equity appetite from this investor group compared to Q1-20 – only to be outshone by private debt activity.