I get asked a lot by the non-American students as to where the Private Equity firms are focused in the States, and now Theo O’Brien from Private Equity Blogger has put together data from Private Equity Info into some nice, easy to read tables and pie charts so answering that question is a whole lot easier:
The firms themselves are not very spread out across the map with three states (New York, California, and Illinois) being the home to nearly half the PE houses in the country, and the top six sates (add Texas, Massachusetts, and Connecticut) are where over two-thirds of the firms hang their hat. The portfolio companies themselves have a much more even level of distribution with only California sticking out in double digit locality.