Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0, European Business School - International University Schlo? Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel, language: English, abstract: Private equity companies are seen as high risk investment funds, trying to gain high returns on their investments in a period of around three to seven years. Even if the private equity industry has played an important role in growth or as an external financing source of established companies as well as newly-established companies, private equity investors are not seen as sustainable value creators. In various occasions, private equity funds are even declared as a greedy instrument to earn fast money. In order to analyse whether private equity companies create value in a sustainable way, this study compares the performance of private equity backed initial public offerings (IPOs) with non-private equity backed IPOs. Moreover, it analyses whether private equity backed IPOs outperform the market. This study evaluates the performance of private equity backed IPOs by performing two separate empirical analyses: one focusing on the UK private equity market - the largest private equity market in Europe - and one focusing on the entire European market.The research conducts a quantitative analysis of secondary data, more specifically by using stock prices of private equity backed firms, non-private equity backed firms and applicable benchmark market indices. ...