Henry Lahr

Organizational Forms and Risk of Listed Private Equity

This article investigates the stock performance of listed private equity and develops a classification of vehicles according to their organizational structure. The authors identify and examine 274 liquid listed private equity entities in the period from 1986 to 2008. The listed private equity shows a Dimson beta of 1.7 without any significant excess return, and vehicles differ strongly depending on their organizational form. Market risk is high in internally managed vehicles but low in externally managed ones. The authors conclude that different sources of cash flows, such as management fees and carried interest, can account for these risk characteristics. Precautions must be taken, therefore, when using specific listed private equity vehicles as a proxy for traditional private equity funds.

Liquidity, Technological Opportunities, and the Stage Distribution of Venture Capital Investments

This paper explores the determinants of the stage distribution of European venture capital investments from 1990 to 2011. Consistent with liquidity risk theory, we find that the likelihood of investing in earlier stages increases relative to all private equity investments during liquidity crisis years. While liquidity is the main driver of acquisition investments and, to some extent, of expansion financings, technological opportunities are overall the main driver of early and late stage venture capital investments. In contrast to the dotcom crash, the recent financial crisis negatively affected the relative likelihood of expansion investments, but not of early and late stage investments.

Early Indicators of Fundraising Success by Venture Capital Firms

We show how a venture capital firm’s fundraising is affected by its investment choices. We investigate three leading indicators that are calculated from the type of investments the venture capital firms make: style drift investments, follow-on investments, and investments in which the venture capital firm is not the lead investor in the portfolio company. We find that these investments are associated with lower fundraising. Investment type and fundraising reaction to investment type are both moderately stable through time. We also find evidence that information about investment types is more important for fundraising during bad states of the world.