2025 HEC Paris-DowJones Small Cap Buyout Performance Ranking

Source: The 2025 HEC Paris-DowJones Small Cap Buyout Performance Ranking, published May 7, 2026, by Prof. Oliver Gottschalg, Antin IP Chaired Professor of Private Equity and Infrastructure, HEC Paris.

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The 2025 HEC Paris-DowJones Small Cap Buyout Performance Ranking has been released, identifying the world’s top-performing small cap private equity firms based on aggregate fund performance across all buyout funds raised between 2012 and 2021. The ranking, produced by HEC Paris in partnership with Dow Jones, is one of the most rigorous and comprehensive performance-based assessments of the global PE industry, analysing data from 695 PE firms and the 1,439 funds they raised during the period, representing an aggregate equity volume of $2.5 trillion.

Renovus Capital Leads the Global Rankings

Renovus Capital tops the 2025 edition with an aggregate performance score of 3.25 — the highest in the ranking and significantly ahead of the second-placed firm. The top 20 ranking is as follows:

Rank	Firm	Performance Score
1	Renovus Capital	3.25
2	Sole Source Capital	2.21
3	GMT Communications Partners	1.89
4	Graycliff Partners	1.82
5	Frontenac Company	1.76
6	Motion Equity Partners	1.54
7	Clarion Capital Partners	1.16
8	Goldner Hawn	1.04
9	Sparring Capital	0.89
10	DBAY Advisors	0.89
11	Chicago Pacific Founders	0.89
12	O2 Investment Partners	0.88
13	YFM Equity Partners	0.87
14	VIA Equity	0.82
15	Down 2 Earth Capital	0.75
16	Eureka Equity Partners	0.71
17	Genesis Capital Equity	0.58
18	IFM Investors	0.57
19	ProA Capital	0.47
20	The Growth Fund	0.42

Methodology: A Rigorous, Multi-Dimensional Performance Assessment

The ranking answers a deceptively simple question: which small cap buyout firm generated the best performance for its investors over the past years? To answer it, HEC Paris uses a proprietary methodology developed by Prof. Oliver Gottschalg that aggregates performance across all of a firm’s funds — not just its best-performing ones — making it a genuinely comprehensive assessment of value creation capability rather than a snapshot of a single vintage.

Performance is assessed across three complementary measures — IRR, DPI (cash-on-cash return multiple), and TVPI (return multiple including accounting values of unrealised investments) — each evaluated on both an absolute and a benchmark-relative basis, producing six performance indicators per firm. These are then combined using a statistical method that weights fund performance data by the empirically-derived reliability of performance at each fund age — giving greater weight to the performance of older, more mature funds where outcomes are more predictable.

The final aggregate performance score is interpreted relative to the average across all firms analysed. A score of 0 represents average performance; a score of 1 places a firm at approximately the 85th percentile; a score of 2 represents performance twice as far above average as a score of 1.

Selection Criteria: Rigorous Standards for Inclusion

The ranking is restricted to PE firms meeting strict objective criteria: at least two funds raised between 2012 and 2021 with full performance data available; total equity raised of between $100 million and $1 billion during the period; investments in the US, EU, or globally; and at least 10 combined observation years across all funds. Funds raised in 2022 or later are excluded, as their performance is considered too immature to assess reliably.

Of the 695 firms in the initial dataset, 91 met all criteria, having raised a combined total of over $49 billion through 194 funds between 2012 and 2021. Performance data is sourced primarily from the Preqin PE fund performance database, supplemented by data provided directly to HEC Paris by PE firms for the purpose of the rankings.

Context and Limitations

The HEC Paris-DowJones ranking is explicitly backward-looking and does not capture recent changes in strategy, core team, or fund size. As such, it reflects demonstrated historical value creation rather than current or forward-looking competitiveness. The confidential nature of the private equity industry also means that the dataset, while among the most comprehensive available, cannot be guaranteed to be complete.

Nevertheless, as Prof. Gottschalg notes, the ranking draws on the same data sources typically used to compose industry-standard PE statistics and represents the best available data for this type of analysis.

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The 2025 HEC Paris-DowJones Small Cap Buyout Performance Ranking was published on May 7, 2026, by Prof. Oliver Gottschalg, Antin IP Chaired Professor of Private Equity and Infrastructure at HEC Paris. The ranking was sponsored by Long Term Assets Limited.