Size Signals Success: Evidence from Real Estate Private Equity

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence suggests that clout and connections matter more in private equity fundraising than do actual performance. In this article, a unique real estate private equity dataset with buy-side and sell-side information is created by the authors to construct and analyze stacked interaction networks for each vintage year. Calculating and regressing centrality measures for industry embeddedness, the authors find that fund managers can benefit from their established connections to plan sponsors while fundraising. By adding fund size into the equation, they demonstrate that the total capital under management and the size of previous funds have a significant and positive effect on fundraising speed.