所有的私募股权公司都喜欢吹嘘自己所管理基金的表现，以至于像“前四分之一”这样的评价实际上已经失去了意义。但巴黎HEC商学院的管理策略教授奥利弗•戈沙尔格并不满足于知道哪些公司是世界上表现最好的公司。他要给它们逐一排名。

    周一早间，戈沙尔格和道琼斯公司（Dow Jones）发布了最新的一期私募股权公司表现排名报告（PE Performance Ranking Report）。报告分析了112家公司，这些公司在1998年至2007年间为726支基金总计筹集了约7,260亿美元。下面是戈沙尔格对排名的解释：

    总体表现分既不是内部收益率式的年度回报率指标，也不是投资资金增值倍数。它只有参照我们所研究的所有私募股权公司的平均表现分来看才有意义：总体表现分为1，意味着这家私募股权公司比平均表现高一个“标准差”，即它在所有样本公司中处于前15%，即85% 的公司总体表现分低于它。总体表现分为2，意味着这家公司的表现是总体表现分为1的公司的两倍。表现属于平均水平的私募股权公司的总体表现分（设定）为0。

    今年拔得头筹的是1999年成立的荷兰公司Waterland Private Equity，得分2.42。它的排名较去年的第三名（得分2.27）跃升了两位。而过去连续两年拔得头筹的Leonard Green & Partners投资公司的排名则跌出了前20。

    紧随Waterland之后，依次是Friedman Fleischer & Lowe（得分2.32）、铂金资本（Platinum Equity，得分2.10）、海曼傅莱曼公司（Hellman & Friedman ，得分1.63）和德州太平洋投资集团（TPG Capital，得分1.5）。

    Every private equity firm likes to brag about its fund performance, to the point that terms like "top quartile" have virtually lost their meanings. But Oliver Gottschalg, a professor of management strategy at HEC in Paris, isn't satisfied by knowing which group of firms are the world's best-performers. He wants to rank them, one-by-one.

    Gottschalg and Dow Jones this morning released their latest edition of the PE Performance Ranking Report, which analyzes 112 firms that raised around $726 billion for 726 funds between 1998 and 2007. Here is how Gottschalg explains his rankings:

    The aggregate performance score is neither an IRR-type annual return measure nor a money multiple. It can only be interpreted relative to the average aggregate performance score of all firms we analyzed: An aggregate performance score of 1 means that a given PE Firm has an aggregate performance that is one "standard deviation" above the average performance, which would position it typically at the 85th percentile, i.e. 85% of all firms would have a lower aggregate performance. Also, an aggregate performance score of 2 means that performance is twice as high as for an aggregate performance score of 1. A PE Firm with the average performance has (by design) an aggregate performance score of 0.

    This year's top firm was Waterland Private Equity, a Dutch group founded in 1999, which received a score of 2.42. This was a jump from third place in last year's ranking (when it received a 2.27). Leonard Green & Partners, which has led this ranking for the past two years, fell completely out of the top 20.

    Following Waterland were Friedman Fleischer & Lowe (2.32), Platinum Equity (2.10), Hellman & Friedman (1.63) and TPG Capital (1.5).