Costliness of Placement Agents

In this paper, we provide original evidence on the economic role of placement agents as the financial intermediaries between general and limited partners in private equity. Our research is based on 902 private equity funds raised over the period of 1990 to 2011. This data shows that general partners hire placement agents to provide funding for approximately one tenth of the private equity funds they manage. The multitude of services provided by placement agents adds value to both general as well as limited partners. We find a positive impact from the placement agent’s relative fees on a fund’s performance. Similar to other financial intermediaries, the costliness of the placement agent decreases with the investment amounts committed by the limited partners. The fee levels are determined by negotiations with a general partner as well as by the phenomenon of free riding. Further, we find that placement agents do not take advantage of the heterogeneity of the fund’s returns and the potentially high benefits of successful investment picks. Namely, they predominantly prefer to charge their clients fixed fees. We conclude from our findings that limited partners succeed in picking better performing funds because they invest relatively higher amounts of their available allocations of private equity into the funds that yield higher returns. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015