As the focus in private equity increasingly shifts to value creation in a world with less leverage, Kurt Björklund, co-managing partner of buyout firm Permira, sounded upbeat during his keynote address at the BVCA Summit last week.

Björklund disagreed with charges that the buyout industry is "a herd of Libor-grazing leverage buffalos". He explained that 77% of returns on Permira's investments had been due to value creation through performance improvement, with 13% due to multiple arbitrage (buying well and selling at a good price) and 10% was due to the use of leverage.