Search

This study examines the impact of private equity fund managers' (GPs') ESG disclosure on fundraising. To this end, a sample of global private equity and venture capital funds that completed fundraising between 2020 and 2022 is employed. Our findings indicate that an increase in ESG disclosure by GPs is associated with an increase in fundraising. This indicates that GPs' ESG disclosure diminishes information asymmetry and has a favorable impact on fundraising. Conversely, the level of ESG disclosure among limited partners (LPs) has no significant impact on the relationship between GPs' ESG disclosure level and fundraising. The findings of this study have significant implications for private equity stakeholders, including GPs, given the current context of declining investment demand due to rising interest rates, recessionary concerns, poor performance and tighter regulations on private equity management. In this environment, ESG disclosure is becoming increasingly challenging for private equity firms to utilize as a fundraising strategy.

This research paper examines the performance of leading private equity firms as compared to prominent companies within the S&P 500. By analyzing specific case studies, the paper illustrates the unique strategies employed by successful private equity firms and how these strategies yield varying performance levels compared to traditional public companies. The research highlights differences in operational management, financial leverage, and market dynamics that contribute to these outcomes. Furthermore, the paper reviews existing literature to contextualize the findings within broader trends in private equity and public markets, ultimately providing insights for investors and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Table of Contents I. The Problem of Private Equity in Health Care A. The Private Equity Model B. The History and Trends of Private Equity Investment in Health Care [...], Private equity has rapidly enlarged its presence in the health care sector, expanding its investment targets from hospitals and nursing facilities to physician practices. The incursion of private equity is the latest manifestation of a long trend toward the corporatization and financialization of medicine. Private equity pools investments from large private investors to buy controlling stakes in companies through leveraged buyouts or similar arrangements that use the companies' own assets to finance debt. These investors seek to earn handsome profits by rapidly increasing revenues before selling off the investment. Private equity's incursion into health care is especially concerning. The drive for quick revenue generation threatens to increase costs, lower health care quality, and contribute to physician burnout and moral distress. These harms stem from market consolidation, overutilization and upcoding, constraints on physicians' clinical autonomy, and compromises in patient care. Policymakers attempting to counter these threats can barely keep up. Like a cloud of locusts, private equity moves so quickly that by the time lawmakers become aware of the problem and researchers study the effects, private equity has moved on to other investment targets. While it remains unclear whether private equity investment is fundamentally more threatening to health policy than other forms of acquisition and financial investment--whether by publicly traded companies, conglomerate health systems, or health insurers--private equity presents a heightened threat of commercialization. Even if private equity is not uniquely harmful, it is extremely adept at identifying and exploiting market failures and payment loopholes. The emphasis on short-term returns and exit, the heavy reliance on debt, and the insulation from professional and ethical norms make private equity investors more avid to exploit revenue opportunities than institutional repeat players. Thus, this Article's central claim is that the influx of private equity into health care poses sufficient risks to warrant an immediate legal and policy response. Public policy should primarily target market failures and payment loopholes and only secondarily curb private equity investment per se. The good news is that we already have many tools under federal and state law with the potential to address the harms of commercialization. These can be used or sharpened to address the particular concerns raised by private equity's incursion into physician markets. Key tools include antitrust oversight, fraud and abuse enforcement, and state laws regulating the corporate practice of medicine and the terms of physician employment. In some instances, legislative or regulatory action may be needed to adapt existing laws. In other instances, new laws may be needed to close payment loopholes or correct market distortions. A leading example is the recent No Surprises Act, which curtails surprise out-of-network medical billing. While the Article lays out a roadmap for additional legal and policy actions to protect the health system from the acute risks of private equity, these are patches rather than systemic solutions. If these patches fail to stave off the incessant march toward commercialization of health care, we may see renewed calls to fundamentally rethink the market orientation of the U.S. health system.

I. Introduction Medicine in the United States is big business. (1) In 2022, spending on healthcare services totaled an estimated $4.5 trillion dollars--over 17% of the U.S. economy and growing. [...]

This cross-sectional study estimates the geographic penetration of private equity–owned outpatient mental health and substance use disorder practices across the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With spring in full swing, medtech business owners thinking about selling may be curious about the current buyer landscape. Lets begin by stating the obvious: Potential purchasers could include industry [...]

Under what conditions can the state discipline private equity firms into delivering the investment required to meet the coming needs of industrial transformation? States have sought to crowd in private capital to finance industrial development, but the results have so far been less than satisfactory. Prevailing accounts of financial industry power largely characterise an arms-length state-finance relationship that has unfolded in private-led markets where private equity firms have contributed to the secular growth in non-productive economic activity. This article problematises the assumption of private-led markets and argues that state-led markets present a counterfactual in which the disbursement of public money entails strict policy discipline and tight embedding between the state and private equity firms, which provides the conditions for them to emerge as unlikely champions of industrial policy. Two cases of co-investment between Chinese and European sovereign wealth funds demonstrate the power dynamics at play. Where PE firms in the Sino-Irish co-investment facilitated the international scaling of Irish firms in China, the PE firms operating in Europe failed to embed Chinese firms into regional supply chains in the Sino-Belgian co-investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While operationally most of the SAM and MOGI sectors, when developed, are lucrative, they also suffer from an array of uncertainties and disruptions. It becomes less acceptable for long term investors when the uncertainties continue to hog the market; as it is happening now. While globally, the governments are keeping away from the risky investments, the private equity investment can be a method for renewed investments in the SAM and MOGI sector, starting from exploration to the value chain investing while the fields are operational. In order to be rational to the investing as well as to protect investor interest, the governments must play an alert but flexible watchdog role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corporatization of health care in the United States has forced us to confront society's moral expectations of the industry, which serves uniquely vulnerable consumers. Health care has become increasingly more lucrative, attracting private equity ("PE") investment, specifically in private physicians' practices. Physicians find PE transactions appealing because physicians have difficulty competing with large hospital systems and complying with expansive regulatory requirements. The attention given by PE to health care has raised concerns regarding the tension between the expected priorities of PE firms and health care. Additionally, the nature of PE investments through roll-ups of smaller companies has regulators worried that they cannot control PE's involvement in the industry. The Federal Trade Commission ('FTC') is one regulatory agency that has explicitly addressed PE investments through revisions to its Merger Guidelines to ensure PE does not slip through its grasp. As PE roll-ups are a type of health care consolidation, this Comment will compare the FTC's past efforts to regulate hospital mergers with its potential future efforts to regulate PE investment in health care under the 2023 Merger Guidelines. The Comment also states how the 2023 Merger Guidelines still fall short of effectively regulating PE investment in health care and how healthcare-specific guidelines could improve their effectiveness. It additionally argues that it may be best to let PE investment continue until the market self-corrects. The Comment provides supplementary methods to undermine the attractiveness of PE investment for physicians, which would decrease the frequency of these transactions and speed up the economic self-correcting process. The various paths forward further support the Comments overarching argument that, as it currently stands, the FTC's antitrust laws are not effective in regulating PE investment in health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]