A Model of Private Equity Fund Compensation
International Economic Association, Proceedings of the Sixteenth World Congress, Forthcoming
26 Pages
Posted: 23 Oct 2012
KAIST
Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
University of California, Davis - Graduate School of Management
There are 3 versions of this paper
Date Written: September 15, 2011
Abstract
This paper analyzes the economics of the private equity fund compensation. We build a novel model to estimate the expected revenue to fund managers as a function of their investor contracts. In particular, we evaluate the present value of the fair-value test (FVT) carried interest scheme, which is one of the most common profit-sharing arrangements observed in practice. We extend the simulation model developed in Metrick and Yasuda (2010a) and compare the relative values of the FVT carry scheme to other benchmark carry schemes. We find that the FVT carry scheme is substantially more valuable to the fund managers than other commonly observed (and more conservative) carry schemes, largely due to the early timing of carry compensation that frequently occurs under the FVT scheme. Interestingly, conditional on having an FVT carry scheme, fund managers’ incremental gains from inflating the reported values of the funds’ un-exited portfolio companies would be negligible.
Keywords: private equity, venture capital, fund managers, managerial compensation, corporate governance
JEL Classification: G1, G2, G3, G17, G24, G34
Suggested Citation:
Suggested Citation
Choi, Wonho Wilson and Metrick, Andrew and Yasuda, Ayako, A Model of Private Equity Fund Compensation (September 15, 2011). International Economic Association, Proceedings of the Sixteenth World Congress, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2162692
