Corporate Transformation under Private Equity Ownership

Abstract

This thesis aims at investigating and comparing financial changes in private equity owned companies to non-private equity owned companies. We have done this by selecting 25 companies that have been exited by a private equity firm between 2004 and 2012 and compared changes in growth, profitability and efficiency during the holding period to a number of comparable companies. We found that private equity owned companies increased their profitability and growth more than comparable companies during the holding period, but there were no evidence of a similar superior increase in efficiency.