Determinants of Private Equity Fundraising in Western Europe

The aim of this paper is to identify the key factors that lie behind venture capital/private equity fundraising in countries where there is scarce and asymmetric information about final returns. The main contribution of this paper is to explain fundraising by means of variables directly related to the venture capital process rather than by macroeconomic ones. We use panel data techniques on data from 16 European countries during the nineties. In the light of the long period required for investing committed capital and the illiquid nature of investments until the fund is divested, the focus is placed on the investing capabilities of fund managers. We find that the amounts invested in the previous year have a positive and significant impact on fundraising. In this sense, the market would be regarding the ability of fund managers to invest the total amounts investors have previously committed.