Hedge funds are attracting a growing proportion of institutional assets: they have been able to achieve above-average absolute returns in aggregate.

ECONOMIST: Investment: In search of those elusive returns | The

According to the government's own bovine-tb-impact-assessment, the public costs of carrying out the cull exceed any money saved from predicted falls in bovine TB (an average 16% reduction in new cases over nine years - in absolute figures, this amounts to preventing 47 out of 292 infected herds, for an area about half the size of the Gloucestershire pilot zone).

BBC: Analysis: The battle over brock

Performance data show that sponsor-to-sponsor deals did underperform other types of deals slightly on an absolute return basis by 3 percentage points, on average, in the years prior to 2004, and by 8 percentage points since then, according to PERACS, a PE performance analytics company (see Figure).

FORBES: A World Of Difference For Private Equity