An Oxford University academic has called for an academic approach to measuring private equity performance, saying the industry figures are often different to true returns.

Dr. Ludovic Phalippou, a lecturer at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, who has composed a study entitled "Why is the evidence on private equity performance so confusing", said that while industry associations tend to show that private equity outperforms public equity, academic studies showed that buyout funds' returns were comparable to public equity.