The GX Private Equity IndexSM (PEI) saw an overall return of 4.2 percent

State Street Corporation, announced the results of the GX Private Equity IndexSM (PEI), a benchmark for comparative analysis of private equity performance, which includes a comprehensive data set dating back nearly three decades. In the second quarter of 2015, the index saw an overall return of 4.2 percent.

The index is based on directly sourced limited partnership data and represents more than $2.2 trillion of private equity investments, with 2,492 unique private equity partnerships, as of June 30, 2015.

“Throughout the last three years, from October 2012 to September 2015, we have witnessed significant amounts of capital distributions with the ratio of distributions to paid-in capital reaching an historical high of 1.78x,” said Will Kinlaw, head of State Street Associates. “When we looked at the year-to-date figures in our GX PEI database, which we estimate covers approximately 60 percent of the total asset class, we saw that as of September 30 2015, distributions had exceeded $188 billion.”

Additional second quarter highlights include:

• Buyout was the best performing private equity strategy with a return of 4.67%. Investors in these funds benefited from more than $52.5 billion in capital distributions, or more than double the total capital drawdowns.

• Venture Capital funds outside of the US and Europe, primarily made up of emerging market funds, had a particularly strong performance posting a return of 7.02%.

• European-focused private equity funds recorded a return of 7.78% in the second quarter.

“European-focused private equity’s 7.78 percent return this quarter reversed the almost 3 percent decline from the first quarter of this year. This was partially due to the 3.7 percent euro appreciation during the second quarter, but we also saw the ratio of distributions to paid-in capital reach 2.85x during the quarter,” added Kinlaw.