TPG: A Tale in Five Trades

Plus: CUSIP, Western Union, Banking Bonuses

Investment managers operate strategies across many different timescales. Hedge funds think in terms of quarters and years, high frequency traders in minutes, private equity firms in decades. While a hedge fund may do hundreds of trades over a year, it would take a private equity fund decades to do so many trades.

We’ve talked about private equity a fair bit here before. A year ago, in The Private Equity Firms' Private Equity Firm, we looked at how the industry is structured and how it makes money. More recently, we drilled down into the business model of the biggest player in the market, in Blackstone's Moment. 

Ahead of its upcoming stock market debut, this week we turn our attention to TPG.

TPG is coming up to thirty years old but over that time it’s done just over 640 trades. Granted, these are big trades – whole chunks of companies, from A&O Hostels to ZScaler. And trading frequency has increased – three years ago, the firm had only ever done around 460 trades. But 640 is a manageabl…