Gli assetti proprietari degli operatori di private equity e la relazione con la performance delle aziende partecipate

The peculiar relationship established between a company and a private equity fund has attracted the attention of researchers and scholars who, through numerous contributions, have analyzed the impact of private equity on companies, comparing the performance of venture backed and non venture-backed companies. This thesis accepts, as already demonstrated in national and international literature, the positive contribution of the institutional investor to the company, and it focuses solely on the sample of venture-backed companies. This research project comes to light from the reflection that calculating the post IPO performance of the venture backed company group, without making distinctions relative to the characteristics of the fund investing in the company, might prove to be too general an approach. For this reason, the post IPO performance is been analyzed, considering the different ownerships of the fund. The thesis proposes, in detail, an analysis of the Italian market; in particular, an analysis of the IPOs of venture backed companies made during the period ranging from 1999 to 2006. The aim is that of establishing whether the performance of companies with bank-owned private equity backing was significantly different from that of companies backed with non bank-owned funds, subsequent to listing on the Stock Exchange. The analysis is been carried out by using different methodologies: short- medium- and long-term performance after IPOs. Starting from the prior studies, the paper shows that there are significant differences in performance calculated for the entire time span under examination and in six-month performance after the IPO, where, companies with non-bank funds backing prove to have a better performance than those backed with bank-owned private equity. These findings drive to further the analysis in order to determine if the reasons of this difference correlate to particular features of the company’s balance sheet, or to particular private equity management rules of participation, or to specific private equity features. The bank-owned private equity, compared to non-bank owned private equity, invests in companies with a higher leverage and a lower market capitalization at IPO time; it holds a lower percentage of capital after IPO, has a higher conflict of interest, and participates less frequently as the sole fund. The last analysis demonstrates that the only variable that simultaneously distinguishes the two groups of companies, and influences the performance at 6-month time after IPO is the leverage. Bank-owned private equity invests in companies that have more debt than non bank-owned private equity; this is one of the reasons, which affects the lower company six-month performance after the IPO.