More on Private-Equity losses

My friend blbl sent me this report from Bloomberg which is not new. How did I miss it? What interesting is that it confirms what I wrote down as guess work in the previous post:

June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Fortress Investment Group LLC has $5 billion in unrealized losses from private-equity funds started since 2005, the beginning of a two-year buyout boom, more than its largest New York rivals combined.

Blackstone Group LP, the biggest private-equity firm, had an unrealized loss of $861 million in the period and KKR & Co.’s buyout funds are down $708 million, according to regulatory filings in the past six weeks. Funds at Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management LLC posted a profit.

The numbers, some disclosed for the first time, show how the largest buyout firms have navigated the damage from investments made before the 2007 financial crisis and allow clients to compare performance as managers seek new money. Blackstone, run by co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, aims to close its seventh buyout fund this month. Wes Edens, who co-founded Fortress and oversees private equity, plans to raise a fund next year, after abandoning an attempt in 2009.
[...]
“Managers have traditionally obfuscated performance,” said Harold Bradley, chief investment officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which oversees $1.7 billion. “That prohibited comparative analysis. The new data is a start.”

Blackstone started publishing similar information earlier this year, after an exchange of letters with the SEC. The firm, in a letter dated Dec. 15, agreed to comply with a request by the regulator to provide investors “with a more meaningful understanding” of the performance of each of the firm’s “significant” funds.

There's so much more in the report, it's definitely worth reading. Bloomberg has done a great job gathering figures about many of these funds. Cheers!