Within the private equity industry space there is no comprehensive list or database of PE firms or buyout firms.  The value of such a product restricts its ability to be offered at no cost.  Unfortunately, there is no free and available resource which allows someone to search for all of the private equity firms located within North America, or even worldwide.

The reasoning behind this lack of available information is due to the enormous amount of time and attention needed to find and research PE firms.  Just the process of gathering all of the names of potential firms takes too much time to collect and formulate into one document for the product to be offered at no cost.  In addition, when you add in the information included within most PE firm databases or directories it becomes a staggering figure.  For example, most premium and compete databases, directories and listings include information regarding names of principal an executive personnel, their office phone numbers, personal cell numbers, the office’s physical address, internet website address, and business information including assets under management (AUM).  In a listing or directory that contains 1,000 separate PE firms which included the previous information, there would be over 18,000 different pieces of information.  The sheer amount salaried paid hours to research and gather all this information and place all within one file source is the reason why there are no complete listings of PE firms.

However, if you are only looking for only the names of potential private equity firms, there a few available.  None of the lists provided will include all the information mentioned previously, and will not have a complete list of only names.  Consequently, there is no complete PE firm listing or directory that is free.