If you manage a private fund and are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, you spend a good chunk of April (and maybe more) filling out Form PF. Ever wonder what the SEC does with all that data? They publish an annual report on fund statistics, which was recently released.
Form PF implemented Section 404 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which directed the SEC to establish reporting requirements for advisers to private funds. That reported information was to be sent on for use by the Financial Stability Oversight Council in monitoring risk to the U.S. financial system. The SEC also purports to use information obtained from Form PF in its regulatory programs and investor protection efforts relating to private fund advisers.
As of the end of 2014, there were 24,725 private fund reporting to the SEC. About 1/3 were labeled hedge funds and another 1/3 were private equity funds. There were 1,789 real estate funds.
Managing those funds were 2,694 advisers. Of those, 260 were real estate fund managers.
Gross assets for all private funds just missed the $10 trillion mark of gross value. ($9.956 trillion to be more exact). Real estate funds comprised $350 billion of that total.
One surprise is that the biggest owner of private funds is other private funds. (see Table 10) Private funds hold 20% of all private funds, with government pension plans holding 12.8% and private pension plans holding 12.5%.
There is some other interesting data in the report. It’s worth spending a few minutes flipping through it.
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