Search Fund performances vs other Investments through Worldwide Crisis
March 27, 2020
by a searcher from IESE Business School in 78430 Louveciennes, France
Hello all,
I'm in the process of raising funds for my Search Fund project in the middle of the COVID-19 worldwide crisis in France where Search Funds are fairly new, I would like to add an appendix to my current PPM that could demonstrate that in times of crisis such as the one the world is living today, Search Funds are much safer and reliable investments than other placements and have better performances. I'm interested in compiling any research (on top of Stanford's and IESE's classic notes which I already know), studies, articles, analysis that might have been produced on this topic analyzing Search Fund performances through recent global economic / health / others types of crisis. Could you please help?
from University of Alberta in Calgary, AB, Canada
I am in the same boat and I have tried, albeit relatively unsuccessfully to date, to find similar research. An interesting chart is included in the following article (it is an aggregation of data from previous versions of the Stanford GSB study), while it doesn't focus on performance rather it shows fundraising, acquisition, and exit statistics. Looking back to the global financial crisis as a recent period demonstrate a potentially similar point in the economic cycle, fundraising activity seemed to be impacted in the years following the GFC (rather than in 2009 as would have been expected).
https://www.axial.net/forum/as-search-fund-popularity-rises-alternative-models-emerge/
Keep me posted on any additional information you come across.
from Columbia University in Copenhagen, Denmark
I have recently conducted a literature review on search funds, and didn't stumble upon any studies on search fund performance in crises. Probably because search funds as an asset class was in a nascent phase last time we had a crisis impacting the financial markets.
I think a good alternative is to place search fund within the private equity (buyouts) asset class. Plenty of studies have been conducted on PE's performance during crises.
Please let me know if you find research on search funds performance in crises. Thanks.