Abstract
In this paper the author analyzes the role of benchmark in the evaluation of private equity performance funds. The evaluation of private equity performance presents specific features that don't enable a comparison between return on private equity and return on classic economic and financial indicators. In general, the performance measures computed at company level are written according to time weighted return, differently from private equity where performance are written as internal rate of return. Although internal rate of return is appropriate, referring to the evaluation of private equity performance, this measure presents remarkable limits in case of comparison between private equity performance and others asset class's performance. In fact, today, an efficient, not-biased ad consistent benchmark for private equity, doesn't exist. Therefore, this paper presents an initial methodological approach and model to compute an efficient benchmark for the evaluation of private equity based on time weighted methodology.