Deciphering Private Equity

You or someone you know almost certainly works for a company connected to private equity or is invested in a buyout fund through a pension or retirement account. Getting smart about the way these things work means getting comfortable with the alphabet soup of acronyms and abbreviations they use. Some are meant for pure shorthand, but others feel like they’re meant to give it a sheen of importance and others to obfuscate what’s actually going on. For example: “TPG and KKR aren’t likely to exit the TXU LBO through an IPO. There was no way they could do a recap, and the LPs will be lucky to get their money back. The GPs can probably forget about carry and it’s going to make a huge dent in the funds’ IRRs.”

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