Unquote

A woman's job

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Most private equity black-tie dinners resemble penguin colonies: hordes of uniformly dressed men walking about, increasingly clumsily as the champagne flows. Even when this sea of black is very occasionally broken up by a more colourful ensemble, this is as likely to be a(nother) man in a kilt as it is to be a woman. Private equity is most certainly a male-dominated world

This fact is highlighted by the handful of "Most Influential/Important Women in Private Equity" surveys. A corresponding list exclusively for men does not exist, while most non-gender-specific surveys name nearly all men. Some find the overt distinction offensive: one of the so-called "Top 20 Women in UK Private Equity" told your editor she thought it sounded like a consolation prize rather than any true recognition of merit, and that she'd only feel she'd truly made it once she made it onto a non-discriminatory list.

Might the current financial crisis catalyse a wave of enhanced female financial empowerment? There are now calls for more women to be in high-reaching financial roles so as to avoid another meltdown. Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman even recently quoted EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes when she suggested the downturn would have been less pronounced had it been Lehman Sisters rather than Brothers.

The recent out-performance by University of Pennsylvania's endowment fund over that of Yale's and Harvard's could perhaps go some way to proving this point. Current CIO Kristin Gilbertson took over in 2004 tasked with increasing Penn's alternative assets' allocation from the then 7% to 25%. Faced with a slew of mega-funds as investment opportunities, she opted instead to forgo the 2006 and 2007 vintage funds with their hefty management fees and ploughed the money instead into treasury bonds. Fast forward to 2008-2009 and the endowment has roughly 13% of its assets in alternatives and was able to meet its capital commitments.

Claims of female financial superiority have been myriad in the wake of the credit crunch, claiming perceived female prudence may have mitigated, if not altogether avoided the crisis. But of course prudence usually implies less upside in the market rallies. In the ten years to June 2008, Harvard's endowment achieved average annual returns of 14% and Yale's 16%; alternatives-light Penn generated just 7.1%. However, with 2005-2007 vintages looking shaky and 2009-2010 funds widely accepted as tomorrow's stellar vintages, Penn's heap of dry powder makes it well placed to leapfrog its Ivy League rivals.

Yours sincerely,

Kimberly Romaine, Editor-in-chief, unquote"

Tel: +44 20 7004 7526

kimberly.romaine@incisivemedia.com.

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