More than 50 institutional investors have lent their names to the Institutional Limited Partners Association’s Private Equity Principles, a best practice document that will help guide future investments in private equity and move the industry a step closer to establishing a set of guidelines that could strengthen the long-term viability of private equity as an asset class.

The support includes endorsements from major public and corporate pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations, family offices, fund-of-funds, general partners and industry advisors, which collectively manage billions of dollars of private equity assets, ILPA says.

The ILPA Private Equity Principles were first released Sept, 8, 2009, and outline practices focused on enhancing partnership governance, strengthening alignment of interests and improving investor reporting and transparency for the private equity industry. ILPA believes the limited partner and general partner communities as well as other industry practitioners would mutually benefit from an improved set of guidelines to reaffirm a focus on investment value creation.

“We are very pleased with the level of support we have received thus far,” says Kathy Jeramaz-Larson, executive director of ILPA. “It reflects the firm belief from institutional investors that adoption of the Principles will help lead to a stronger, more sustainable industry and, ultimately, improved investment returns.”

The ILPA board has also approved the formation of a new Best Practices Committee that will continue to seek ways to improve the industry. The committee will solicit input from private equity practitioners.

“The global distribution of the ILPA Private Equity Principles has initiated some thoughtful discussions between limited partners and general partners around the world,” says Joncarlo Mark, chairman of ILPA. “The feedback from the general partner community has universally been supportive in that most private equity participants agree that strong alignment of interests, sound partnership governance and quality investor reporting and transparency are key tenets to the success of private equity as an institutional investment asset class.”

ILPA is a not-for-profit association committed to serving limited partner investors in the global private equity industry. It has over 215 institutional member organizations that collectively manage approximately $1 trillion of private equity assets.

For a copy of the ILPA Private Equity Principles and a list of endorsing organizations, please visit www.ilpa.org.

IE