Small and middle market buyouts

January 2023

Over the last 20 years, buyout managers targeting the lower end of the market – private companies with enterprise values of $500 million or less – have consistently outperformed public equities while performing in-line with other buyout strategies. This lower end of the buyout market has also historically generated a wider performance spread relative to that of other buyout strategies.

The objective of this paper is to examine the sources of those returns and expectations for their persistence in the future.