How does Nordic private equity performance compare to North America?

Abstract

As the private equity industry and especially the venture capital industry has developed in the Nordic region it is important to evaluate how it has performed. This thesis evaluates how funds in the Nordic region have performed financially compared to their North American counterparts.

The performance of the private equity funds analyzed included vintages starting from 1999 until 2016. Since there was an uneven balance of funds, a matching procedure was performed on fund size and industry. Coarsened exact matching with to one-to-one method was the most suitable with a significant improvement in the covariate balances. Matching was followed by multiple linear regression analysis estimated with the robust regression method. Multiple regression models were performed with two of the most used financial performance measures as dependent variables: internal rate of return and the net multiple. The analysis provided statistical evidence that Nordic funds are not only on par with the United States but are performing better. It was also found that venture capital fund performance in the Nordics is on par with the United States. There are signs that the investment environment has matured in the Nordics. The results have implications for foreign private equity funds and limited partners to consider investing in Nordic companies and private equity funds as they can provide good returns.

To understand the reasons for this fully the topic was approached through an exploratory question of which fund and region-specific variables are affecting private equity fund performance. In the Nordics, an increase in the unemployment rate affects fund performance negatively while in the United States the effect was the opposite. In the Nordics, this can be due to the labor market rigidities and high level of social security. It was only found that in the United States an increase in research and development spending has a positive effect on the financial performance justifying an increase in spending.