Private equity continues to evolve, and as the number of PE firms appears to continue to grow, I thought this quote from the Economist made for an interesting introduction to the fund landscape:
According to Preqin, a London-based research house, there were 24 private-equity firms in 1980. In 2015 there were 6,628, of which 620 were founded that year (see chart 2). Such expansion looks all the more striking when you consider what has been happening elsewhere in business and finance. In America, for which there are good data, the number of banks peaked in 1984; of mutual funds in 2001; companies in 2008; and hedge funds, probably, in 2015. Venture-capital companies are still multiplying; but they are effectively just private equity for fledglings.