THE CHANGE IN PRIVATE EQUITY OPERATIONS AND DIVESTMENT DURING THE RECENT CRISIS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ITALIAN MARKET

This work is focused on the acquisition of minority shareholdings by private equity funds and is organized into different sections. The first section consists in the description of the research project and the type of tools and methodologies used. It also deals with private equity and the venture capital activity as well as several types of classification about the investment stage. This section will also mention the investment process for the acquisition of a shareholding by a private equity or a venture capital fund. In the second section it describes the divestment phase of a private equity fund and lists the different kinds of divestments. The third section presents a questionnaire, whose content will be analyzed in detail. The fourth part describes the results of this research which are then further briefly discussed in the conclusion.