Private Equity Fund Prestige

Futurectdoc's figures would be more accurate for average fund size and not AUM, that is correct.

However, like Nouveau said, you should instead look at their investment strategy. Most firms will state on their website that they look for i.e 250mm to 500mm equity checks for example.

Also, fund size isn't good when comparing different strategies.

Summit partners for example has a relatively large AUM but it will never take down large deals or even medium level deals. Even when they do debt financing for their deals, the checks written are relatively small.

AUM is usually correlated with success and therefore prestige (obviously since you had to be good to raise that much) but it's not the only factor or even the main factor. On the sellside, bigger is better because bigger = more fees.

But on the buyside, it doesn't matter HOW you make money as long as you make money. In fact, you can see that recently the larger funds are actually doing pretty badly (TPG single digit returns, KKR negative) while the top mid market shops are doing much better. When you have carry in the game, performance is the most important aspect of a PE shop and what determines its "prestige" or quality.

But to answer OP's question, look at average equity check size instead or go by average fund size. AUM can be misleading if you consider a relatively new PE fund that only has 2 funds raised but both are 1bn+ versus an old PE firm that has 5+ funds but each average fund is only $500mm.