PE firms continue to raise fund

Based on statistics from the LP Source database, 363 U.S.-based private equity funds raised $265.6 billion in 2008, 18% below record $325.8 billion raised by 506 funds in 2007. Economic pains felt across and fund raising is requiring more efforts and longer time. According to Dow Jones, funds of funds and even secondary funds, normally considered well positioned to benefit from market chaos, posted weak fund-raising. There are a lot of good deals in purchase price of a company and profits tend to be much higher when investments are made during down economic cycle. It would be interesting to see next 2 quarters fund raising records and PE firms acquisition activities.