A handful of high achievers are getting great results year-after-year and this is significantly lifting the class average. But there is still areas to work on.

Performance: A-/B+
Overall a strong year - although not trouble-free. There was record fundraising in Europe - the problem was spending it with quoted targets so pricey. As such, a lot of the best work was in secondaries transactions or variants of them. Dyal Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs launched funds targeting $5 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively, to buy minority stakes in private equity firms rather than second-hand stakes in funds, and tap their underlying fee streams.