Diversity in Private Equity - Not So Private Anymore. Uncovering Deal Team Diversity and Examining Its Effect on Deal Performance at EQT

Sammanfattning: The connection between increasing diversity and better performance has been established across industries, but research in a private equity setting is scarce. With the industry being a white man's world, this thesis investigates how gender and nationality diversity on deal teams affect deal performance. This is done using proprietary performance and human resources data from EQT, one of the world's largest active private equity firms. Methodologically, the analysis is based on two unique datasets that track deal team composition and performance for EQT's private equity flagship and mid market funds over time. A descriptive analysis followed by the application of multiple regression and a fixed effects model demonstrates that diversity (i) never has a statistically significant negative effect on performance, and (ii) in some contexts shows a statistically and economically significant effect on several performance metrics.