Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Illinois Teachers' Retirement System: Pr...

Chaplinsky, Susan

Case

Illinois Teachers' Retirement System: Private Equity Performance

Chaplinsky, Susan

F-1712 | Published May 12, 2014 | 21 pages Case

Collection: Darden School of Business

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This case examines performance assessment in private equity (PE). Its main purpose is to familiarize students with the current guidelines regarding disclosure practices in PE and the performance metrics used to evaluate PE performance. The setting for the case is a $50 million investment in a new $1.3 billion fund (Fund III) being raised by Rhine Capital that is under consideration by the pension trustees of Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) at an upcoming meetings in January 2013. Students are asked to calculate the Since Inception–Internal Rate of Return (IRR), TVPI, DPI, RVI, and the public market equivalent (PME) for Rhine Capital’s Fund II and make a recommendation about the $50 million investment in Fund III. The State of Illinois had been under serious financial pressure for some time, and TRS was $52 billion underfunded relative to its future obligations. To help reduce the shortfall in funding, TRS decided to increase its investments in PE, and it is imperative that those investments earn a satisfactory return. The case discusses the difficulty of measuring performance in PE and the relative merits and shortcomings of frequently used performance metrics.