1. Introduction
We study the scale of activity of the Norwegian companies owned by PE funds in the form of value creation and employment. The study includes portfolio companies at the end of 2022.
The overview over the portfolio companies has been collected from the database of the Norwegian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (NVCA).
Register data from Menon’s proprietary database has been used in analyses of value creation and employment. Organic employment growth is identified by use of NVCA’s database and through public announcements of mergers and acquisitions.
Value creation: Companies which pay salaries to employees, taxes to the government and profits to owners generate values for society. The value created in the companies is captured by measuring value creation, calculated as EBITDA and labor costs. This measure can be used to measure portfolio companies’ societal return, e.g., as a share of GDP.
In chapter 1 we give a brief introduction to private equity its value-increasing roles. Chapter 2 presents employment statistics in the portfolio, growth over time and employment by industry. In chapter 3 we present equivalent statistics for value creation in the portfolio. Chapter 4 discusses the development in the portfolio before and after private equity investment. Chapter 5 look at the value creation analysis of the 2022-portfolio against analysis of previous years.