Private equity fund returns, as reported by pension plans

How the figures are worked out

TVPI is what a fund has paid back plus what it is still valued at, for each unit of capital paid in; DPI counts only what it has paid back. Public pension plans publish these for the funds they hold, each at its own date and on its own fee terms, so one fund can show different figures at different plans. A fund's figure here is the median across the plans that report it.

A fund's vintage year is the one its plans report. Funds whose plans disagree on it by two years or more are left out, as are funds whose plans' figures conflict and holdings that are not funds. Strategy and region are classifications Fairworth makes from the fund's name, its manager and how the plans describe it, with the help of an AI model, and some funds may be placed wrongly; funds it cannot place are not shown. The funds are those the plans below hold, most of them US public plans, so they are not a sample of all private equity funds.

All funds, current value takes every fund at its latest reported value, including funds still investing, whose figures will change. Finished funds only takes funds with 5% or less of their total value not yet paid back.

The median is the middle fund of a group; the middle half runs from the lower quartile (a quarter of the funds below it) to the upper quartile (a quarter above). A group of fewer than 5 funds shows no figures.

The strategy and region comparisons divide each fund's TVPI by the median TVPI of all funds of its vintage year, on the same basis, then take the median and quartiles of these ratios across vintages. A vintage with fewer than 5 funds has no median, so its funds are left out. On the current-value basis, funds from 2025 and 2026 are left out: they are too young to compare.

No comparison with public markets is made.

Sources

• CalPERS
• CalSTRS
• CPP Investments (historic: reports to 2022)
• Employees' Retirement System of Rhode Island (historic: reports to 2024)
• Florida State Board of Administration
• Greater Manchester Pension Fund ©Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System (LACERS)
• Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA)
• Maine Public Employees Retirement System (MainePERS)
• Minnesota State Board of Investment
• New York City Employees' Retirement System (NYCERS)
• New York State Common Retirement Fund
• Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund
• Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI)
• Washington State Investment Board
• West Midlands Pension Fund (historic data set, 1992-2019) Source: Wolverhampton City Council licensed under the Open Government Licence
• West Yorkshire Pension Fund ©City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, 2019. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Not investment advice. Quoting these figures: using our data.