The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.”