Hugh MacArthur
Chairman, Global Private Equity, Bain & Company. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executivehostauthorLinkedIn ↗bain.com/our-team/hugh-macarthur ↗
MacArthur helped establish Bain & Company's Global Private Equity practice over three decades ago, advising alternative asset managers and institutional investors on strategy, due diligence, and portfolio operations. He is the principal author of Bain's annual Global Private Equity Report and host of the Dry Powder podcast.
1shows
1appearances
25statements
13resolved
11supported
1contradicted
85%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Hugh MacArthur said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
MacArthur: The private equity liquidity deficit will take 5+ years to resolve
“So we're talking about a five plus year problem as the GFC was in order to process all of this liquidity. This is not going to go away in 20, 25 or 20, 26. It's going to be continued pressure on the institutional LPs for liquidity over the course of the next s…”
MacArthur: Institutional PE allocations will increasingly become a zero-sum game
“They're going to continue to write checks and invest in private equity, but it's going to be much more of a zero sum game. If I'm going to get an allocation from a certain LP, somebody else is probably going to lose their allocation from that LP.”
MacArthur: Co-investments now account for 30% to 40% of all PE capital
“Now, co-investment is about 30 to 40 cents of every dollar that's invested in the industry.”
MacArthur: Co-investments drove a 50% drop in fee revenue for some GPs
“Depending upon the GP, there are some GPs whose Dollar of fees per dollar of AUM have gone down by 50% over the last decade because of co-invest.”
MacArthur: Private equity distributions to LPs fell to 11% of NAV in 2024
“Last year, the distribution to the private equity LPs as a percentage of their net asset value was 11%.”
MacArthur: Zero buyout funds larger than $5B closed globally in Q1 2025
“There was no fund in the buyout world in the first quarter that closed that was above five billion dollars, which is the first time I can remember that happening in quite a period of time.”
MacArthur: Global buyout portfolios hold 30,000 companies worth $3.6 trillion
“There are about 30,000 companies right now that are being held globally in buyout portfolios worth about 3.6 trillion dollars, and about half of those companies have been held for at least five years.”
MacArthur: Industrywide GP holding strategies triggered the massive PE liquidity crisis
“So the mentality of the entire industry is, let's just hold it until we get it fixed and it's right. That can be great for any individual firm, but when the entire industry does it causes a massive liquidity crisis, and that's what we're seeing right now.”
MacArthur: GPs are finally selling assets below target valuations to return capital
“We're starting to see for the first time things being sold at numbers that are probably below the targets where the GPs wanted to sell the asset at because they know at some point in time they're going to be back out on the road raising their flagship buyout f…”
MacArthur: Two-thirds of polled LPs prioritize 100% cash-outs over creative liquidity
“I've spoken to a lot of LP groups over the course of the year. If I'm in person, I do show hands polls. And if I do webinars, I'm doing digital polls and two thirds of the hands that go up in the air or votes That get clicked are always, we want to see more, 1…”
MacArthur: Buyout returns over the past 14 years saw zero margin improvement
“If you look at the last 14 years of realized returns, Roughly speaking, 50% of the returns of buyouts have been due to revenue growth. 50% has been due to multiple expansion, largely owing to the low interest rate structure that we were talking about, and zero…”
MacArthur: Average PE carve-outs returned 1.5x over past decade, trailing industry
“Now in the last decade or so, the average carve out is earning more like one and a half times and trailing the rest of the industry.”
MacArthur: Ultra-wealthy investors cannot name a single respected private asset manager
“We run surveys every single year of ultra high net worth individuals, and we ask them, can you name three respected private asset managers for us? And the number one answer every single year is I don't know.”
MacArthur: PE exits are often driven purely by deal partner preferences
“Typically many GPs, they sell something when the MD that led the deal said, we're ready to sell.”
MacArthur: PE subsector specialization makes passive CIM sorting antiquated
“The world is specialized and even hyper-specialized to the extent that the notion of doing that has become very, very antiquated because people are now organizing firms, funds, and talent around things like subsector expertise, not just sector expertise.”
MacArthur: LPs seeking co-investments must abandon monthly investment committee cadences
“If the LP is asking for co-investment and the GP providing it and saying, I've just got this deal. Here's co-investment for you. I need an answer in a week. And you're an LP and you say, my investment committee meets once a month. It's next three weeks. That's…”
MacArthur: Determining true PE returns is difficult due to data fragmentation
“There's no one source of information that will tell you everything when it takes years and years to really understand whether investments are paying out or not. You can spin things in many different ways, and it is hard to get to the truth.”
MacArthur: Individuals hold half of global wealth but lack PE exposure
“Everybody has recognized now that half of the world's wealth is with individuals and those individuals have almost no exposure to private asset classes”
MacArthur: Software is now the single biggest sector in private equity buyouts
“In the 19 nineties, if you said, hey, let's go get some software businesses and lever them up, and that'll be a great way to do a buyout, people would have laughed at you. That was not the buyout industry, and now it's the single biggest sector in all the buyo…”
MacArthur: PE due diligence relies on external data unlike corporate consulting
“In corporate consulting, You tend to look at a company from the inside. They hire you. You get all of their data. You figure out where their opportunities and their problems are, and you try to solve them. Well, in the private equity world, it's different. You…”
MacArthur: Average PE transaction size has grown from $100M to $1B
“Back in the day, when we started this business, the average transaction size was a hundred million dollars total enterprise value. And so we thought no company was ever going to be big enough to hire Bain once they were a portfolio company, because they were s…”
MacArthur: Bain evaluates 4,000 to 5,000 PE investment opportunities annually
“When you add that all up, it's probably four to 5000 different investment opportunities every single year that we look at.”
MacArthur: Buyout multiples rising from 5x to 12x eliminated PE's error margin
“30 years ago, you didn't really need to do that. When you're paying Five or six times EBTA for an asset. You could put some leverage on it, and as long as the asset did pretty well, you could cash out and make a lot of money. Now that the average multiple is 1…”
MacArthur: One trillion dollars in buyout dry powder remains uncalled
“There's still a trillion dollars of dry powder out there for buyouts, which means if the GP picks up the phone and says, I need your check, the LPs are writing the check, and yet they haven't seen much money back in the last four or five years.”
The other half of the tape: Hugh MacArthur's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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Capital Allocators 2
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Hugh's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Chairman, Global Private Equity, Bain & Company | 1 | 25 | 85% 11/13 | full record on Capital Allocators → |