Quotes About Private Equity

#1. I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that.

Jon Oringer

#2. Private equity helps produce strong companies, promotes innovation and spurs job growth.

N. Robert Hammer

#3. We've got to move beyond the idea that the public and private sectors are at odds. Government has to lay the groundwork for private equity to productively invest in things like education. It's a partnership, not a battle.

Sebastian Pinera

#4. Private-equity and hedge-fund guys typically come into a situation of mediocrity, where rapid change may result in a profit.

Austin Ligon

#5. It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step.

Nathan Myhrvold

#6. I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds.

Ehud Barak

#7. Private equity funds a substantial amount of new businesses and is the source of capital to rejuvenate failing businesses, which are major drivers of job growth in this economy.

N. Robert Hammer

#8. People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient.

David Rubenstein

#9. As president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, I have seen private equity firms plunder company after company, taking rich fees for themselves and cutting costs until there's nothing left to cut. Time and again I've seen their reckless behavior drive companies to declare bankruptcy.

James P. Hoffa

#10. Private equity does pay very well, and my counterparts, guys that I grew up with who are still working at a number of firms, all make a lot of money.

Gerry Schwartz

#11. I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren't that many serious practitioners.

Wilbur Ross

#12. I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.

Jim Rogers

#13. Private equity has been the purview of super wealthy individuals and institutions.

Michael Lee-Chin

#14. I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.

Bill Ackman

#15. If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

James Surowiecki

#16. It's clear to me when you do private equity well, you're making companies more efficient and helping them grow and become more profitable. That success means our investors - such as public pension funds - benefit, which contributes to the economic wealth of society.

David Rubenstein

#17. There is no denying that downsizing can happen when a company receives private equity funding. It is unfortunate and hard on everyone who is affected.

N. Robert Hammer

#18. The lingo used in the space is so arcane and out of date that investors have no context for the discussions. The failure to establish a clear, effective communication system has been the biggest sin private equity has committed.

Bob Rice

#19. In the 1930s, there as a stretch here you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's hat's going on in today's private-equity world.

Charlie Munger

#20. A good default, like Portugal or Greece, would be very good for the private equity business.

David Bonderman

#21. Wall Street, with its army of brokers, analysts, and advisers funneling trillions of dollars into mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity funds, is an elaborate fraud.

Michael Lewis

#22. It's quite astonishing how much money people make in the hedge fund business and in the private equity field, and how well-off affluent families really are.

Kenneth Rogoff

#23. Hedge funds, private equity and venture capital funds have played an important role in providing liquidity to our financial system and improving the efficiency of capital markets. But as their role has grown, so have the risks they pose.

Jack Reed

#24. People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying to raise money at the low end and find that they can't get funding because of this mismatch. I think that there is an opportunity there.

Clayton Christensen

#25. I've heard that one-half of the students at elite schools want to go into private equity or hedge funds. They want to keep up with their age cohorts at Goldman. This can't possibly end well in terms of meeting these expectations.

Charlie Munger

#26. The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money.

Thomas G. Stemberg

#27. Most of India's 300 odd news channels are making losses and are dependent on dubious cross holding, black money and dodgy private equity investors, both foreign and Indian.

Mohammad Hamid Ansari

#28. In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners.

Henry Kravis

#29. For most Indians in America, wealth is not inherited. Neither do we make it as heads of large hedge funds and private equity funds. For us to make it to the top, we have to use our knowhow to create great new technology products and build high-tech companies.

Romesh Wadhwani

#30. Private equity has absolutely no reason to exist. The private equity holder has all the upside and the banks all the downside.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#31. Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead.

Matt Taibbi

#32. STG is a combination of a holding company and a private equity model.

Romesh Wadhwani

#33. Big banks have long had private equity divisions that put up capital for deals too complex or risky for individual shareholders to finance.

Alex Berenson

#34. One thing I'm so grateful for is sidestepping the usual venture capital, private equity route. My friends who have gone that way are many times beholden to their boards of directors, to 'sell' ideas to a team.

Blake Mycoskie

#35. I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs.

Stephen Pagliuca

#36. In our equities business, 49 of the 50 most important Lehman clients are back doing business with us. The flows are 75 to 80 per cent of what they were prior to the bankruptcy. The issues which damaged Lehman were around commercial mortgages and illiquid private equity assets.

Bob Diamond

#37. Whether a tops-down or bottoms-up investor in bonds, stocks, or private equity, the standard analysis tends to judge an investor or his firm on the basis of how the bullish or bearish aspects of the cycle were managed.

Bill Gross

#38. We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies.

Stephen Pagliuca

#39. Not all private equity people are evil. Only some.

Paul Krugman