Risk of Private Equity Fund-of-Fund Investments - A Detailed Cash Flow-Based Approach

Fund-of-fund investments in private equity are becoming increasingly popular due to their potential to diversify across several private equity funds. However, due to the illiquidity and opaqueness of private equity markets only limited knowledge is available on the actual risk profile of fund-of-funds. Hence, we aim at contributing to the field by modeling, quantifying, and testing sensitivities of the risks associated with such investments. We design a detailed cash flow model and adopt the value-at-risk approach, which is modified to fit the two most common measures of return, namely internal rate of return (IRR) and multiple. Based on a proprietary data set of historical transactions we simulate fund-of-funds investments. Further, sensitivity analyses of central input parameters show the impact on risk and return. While reducing the management fee and the carried interest would lead to higher returns, increased diversification reduces risk. Based on our model, reducing the current industry standard of 2% management fee and 20% carried interest of private equity funds increases the mean IRR by 4.3 percentage points.