what is a private equity fund

Intern answered one year ago …

Straight from the TickerHound dictionary:

Private Equity Fund:
http://www.tickerhound.com/dictionary/word/6892/Private%20Equity%20Fund

A fund which invests its money in private equity, often in attempts to gain control over companies in order to restructure the company. When the fund gains control of a company, they will usually take the company off the market if it isn't private already, go through a multi-year restructuring process, and then relist the company on the stock market.

Hedge Fund:
http://www.tickerhound.com/dictionary/word/2296/Hedge%20Fund

A fund, usually used by wealthy individuals and institutions, which is allowed to use aggressive strategies that are unavailable to mutual funds, including selling short, leverage, program trading, swaps, arbitrage, and derivatives. Hedge funds are exempt from many of the rules and regulations governing other mutual funds, which allows them to accomplish aggressive investing goals. They are restricted by law to no more than 100 investors per fund, and as a result most hedge funds set extremely high minimum investment amounts, ranging anywhere from $250,000 to over $1 million. As with traditional mutual funds, investors in hedge funds pay a management fee; however, hedge funds also collect a percentage of the profits (usually 20%).

Basically, a Private Equity fund and a Hedge Fund are the same except that a Private Equity fund will typically ONLY invest in privately held companies (i.e. companies that are not traded on public stock exchanges).