Interview with Professor Steven Kaplan, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business – PE in the year 2025

We interviewed one of the most respected, experienced and cited professors in private markets, Steven Kaplan, Private Equity Professor at University of Chicago Booth School of Business. During the call we discussed:

• Private equity in the year 2025.

• Management fees for GPs.

• PE returns.

• GP performance versus public markets.

• PE regulation from the new U.S. Administration.

• The use of leverage by PE firms.

Steven Kaplan conducts research on issues in private equity, venture capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate governance and corporate finance. He has published papers in a number of academic and business journals. Kaplan is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics.

He is the co-creator of the Kaplan-Schoar PME (Public Market Equivalent) private equity benchmarking approach. A Fortune Magazine article referred to him as "probably the foremost private equity scholar in the galaxy.”

Kaplan teaches advanced MBA and executive courses in entrepreneurial finance and private equity, corporate finance, corporate governance, and wealth management. BusinessWeek named him one of the top 12 business school teachers in the country. Professor Kaplan co-founded the entrepreneurship program at Booth. With his students, he helped start Booth’s business plan competition, the New Venture Challenge (NVC), which has included over 800 companies that have raised almost $1 billion and created over $8 billion in value including GrubHub, Braintree/Venmo and Simple Mills.

He received his AB, summa cum laude, in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Harvard College and earned a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University.