The Size of Limited Partner Icebergs
General partners in private equity funds claim that a variety of global regulations -- Basel III, Solvency II, the "Volcker rule" and the European Alternative Investments Fund Manager Directive -- will severely restrict available fund capital, thus decreasing the amount of financing available to non-listed businesses. Not a good thing for economic growth, particularly when small businesses already are having trouble securing bank loans. However, the situation is not as obvious as general partners describe it. First, funds are the emerged part of the iceberg in terms of private equity: Family offices, corporations (listed or not), sovereign wealth funds, individuals... a significant group of economic actors are indeed doing non-listed investments. This does not necessarily get into the figures reported by the professional associations (such as the NVCA, EVCA and others). In fact, they only gather statistics from their members, who are general partners in private equity funds.
