By Francesco Castellaneta, SKEMA Business School, Université Côte d'Azur (GREDEG), France, francesco.castellaneta@skema.edu | Simon Hannus, Prevestor Partners, Finland, simon.hannus@prevestor.fi | Mike Wright, Center for Management Buyout Research, Imperial College Business School, UK, mike.wright@imperial.ac.uk
PE firms and buyouts have emerged as a field of significant interest for academic research and attracted the increasing attention of policy makers, public opinion and popular press. In particular, there is a strong debate on how private equity firms create value in buyout investments. Notwithstanding this widespread interest in value creation in private equity, there is a lack of research offering an overall view of the various mechanisms by which value can be created in buyout investments. We contribute to shed new light on this issue by reviewing the body of research on value creation and by proposing an overall framework for mapping the heterogeneous opportunities to create value.
A Framework for Examining the Heterogeneous Opportunities of Value Creation in Private Equity Buyouts reviews the literature on value creation in buyout investments and proposes an overall framework for mapping the heterogeneous opportunities to create value. Based on this wide-ranging literature review, the authors identify seven distinct value creation drivers: the financial, operational, strategic, governance, cultural, commercial and institutional drivers. The identification of these drivers allows the authors to capture and systematize the findings of all fields of research, even those that have not been included in existing frameworks. The findings of each paper are first assigned to one of the seven drivers and then to one of the sub-drivers, which are narrower classifications containing the findings of papers related one another.