The concept of "trust but verify," made common through foreign policy negotiations, is a key principle for the majority of private equity limited partners around the world, according to a new study from eVestment, a global leader in institutional investment data and analytics.

Seventy-two percent of LPs said they often trust the high-level performance numbers provided by private equity general partners, yet 75% of LPs said they always or often recalculate those manager-provided numbers as part of their due diligence process.

As one survey participant said in the study verbatim responses, recalculating those numbers is "a required process as part of both fiduciary responsibility and our own understanding." Another said, "Every once in a while, you're going to find something that doesn't quite makes sense, so it's important to go through the process."

The survey also highlighted LP's growing interest in standardized GP performance reporting and heightened due diligence requirements. Seventy-eight percent of respondents disagreed with the statement "It is easy to compare one fund manager's performance numbers with another on a fair and consistent basis." Forty-three percent of respondents said they are increasing their amount of quantitative due diligence and 61% said they are increasing their amount of qualitative due diligence.

"Private equity is attracting more interest from institutional investors and those investors have increased requirements for standardized information and due diligence," said eVestment Director of Private Equity Solutions Graeme Faulds. "With the information needs of LPs increasing, GPs who hope to win mandates need to be prepared to be transparent with their past performance." 

Some other interesting findings from the survey include:

• LPs with less private equity assets under management say they are more trusting of manager-reported numbers. Eighty percent of LPs with less than USD1 billion PE AUM said they often trust performance, compared to only 44% of LPs with more than USD5 billion PE AUM.

• A vast majority of LPs (93%) want private equity fund managers to create value at portfolio companies with operational improvements, while very few were interested in value creation through financial engineering or market timing (21% for both – respondents could pick more than one answer);

• For the majority of LP respondents, due diligence levels don't waiver when evaluating re-investment decisions. Almost two-thirds (60%) of LPs carry out either the same or more due diligence on a manager they are re-investing with compared to a manager that is new to them; and

• Just over two-thirds (67%) of survey respondents carry out public market equivalent analysis, and half of them plan to increase their use of PME.