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The history of private equity and venture capital and the development of these asset classes has occurred through a series of boom and bust cycles since the middle of the 20th century. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel although interrelated tracks.

Since the origins of the modern private equity industry in 1946, there have been four major epochs marked by three boom and bust cycles. The early history of private equity — from 1946 through 1981 — was characterized by relatively small volumes of private equity investment, rudimentary firm organizations and limited awareness of and familiarity with the private equity industry. The first boom and bust cycle — from 1982 through 1993 — was characterized by the dramatic surge in leveraged buyout activity financed by junk bonds and culminating in the massive buyout of RJR Nabisco before the near collapse of the leveraged buyout industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The second boom and bust cycle (from 1992 through 2002) emerged out of the ashes of the savings and loan crisis, the insider trading scandals, the real estate market collapse and the recession of the early 1990s. This period saw the emergence of more institutionalized private equity firms, ultimately culminating in the massive Dot-com bubble in 1999 and 2000. The third boom and bust cycle (from 2003 through 2007) came in the wake of the collapse of the Dot-com bubble—leveraged buyouts reach unparalleled size and the institutionalization of private equity firms is exemplified by the Blackstone Group's 2007 initial public offering.

In its early years through roughly the year 2000, the history of the private equity and venture capital asset classes is best described through a narrative of developments in the United States as private equity in Europe consistently lagged behind the North American industry. With the second private equity boom in the mid-1990s and liberalization of regulation for institutional investors in Europe, the emergence of a mature European private equity market has occurred.

The London Metropolitan Area has the largest gross domestic product in Europe

The economy of Europe comprises about 748 million people in 50 countries.

The difference in wealth across Europe can be seen roughly in the former Cold War divide, with some countries breaching the divide (Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia). Whilst most European states have a GDP per capita higher than the world's average and are very highly developed, some European economies, despite their position over the world's average in the Human Development Index, are relatively poor. Europe has total banking assets of more than $50 trillion and its Global assets under management is more than $20 trillion. (Full article...)

"And out of the delusion that life is a battle that may be lost by a false move grows, I have noticed, a great love for regularity. Men fall into the half-alive habit. Seldom does the cobbler take up with the new-fangled way of soling shoes, and seldom does the artisan willingly take up with new methods in his trade. Habit conduces to a certain inertia, and any disturbance of it affects the mind like trouble. It will be recalled that when a study was made of shop methods, so that the workmen might be taught to produce with less useless motion and fatigue, it was most opposed by the workmen themselves. Though they suspected that it was simply a game to get more out of them, what most irked them was that it interfered with the well-worn grooves in which they had become accustomed to move. Business men go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about--men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas. It could almost be written down as a formula that when a man begins to think that he has at last found his method he had better begin a most searching examination of himself to see whether some part of his brain has not gone to sleep. There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off."

—Henry Ford, My Life and Work Chapter II, 1922

• ... that Eleanor Hadley, a 29-year-old doctoral candidate in economics, was recruited by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to implement antitrust policies in occupied Japan?
• ... that Home Depot CEO Ted Decker ran his own landscaping business in high school?
• ... that Earle M. Chiles, a businessman and philanthropist from Portland, Oregon, was also a senator of the board of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany?
• ... that Malaysian businessman Lim Kok Wing was depicted as "King of Africa"?
• ... that businessman and activist Matthew Glover's charity challenged Pope Francis to become a vegan for Lent?
• ... that Jay Owen Light aspired to be an astronaut before becoming the dean of Harvard Business School?

June 28:

• 1960 - Addison Cresswell, a British comedy talent agent and producer, was born on this day.

• ...that Luca Pacioli, codified the double-entry bookkeeping system in his mathematics textbook Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità published in Venice in 1494?

• ...that, as of August 2008, more than 113 countries around the world, including all of Europe, required or permitted IFRS reporting and 85 required IFRS reporting for all domestic, listed companies?

• ...that IFRS financial statements consist of a statement of financial position, a statement of comprehensive income, a statement of changes in equity, a Statement of Cash Flows and a Notes to the Financial Statements?

• ...that in the circular flow model, the inter-dependent entities of producer and consumer are referred to as "firms" and "households" respectively and provide each other with factors in order to facilitate the flow of income?

• ...that Wassily Leontief was the first to use a matrix representation of a national economy, in his input-output model?

• ...that the balance of payments of a country is the record of all economic transactions between the residents of a country and the rest of the world in a particular period?

• ...that the existence of property rights, besides being a fundamental item in many legal systems, constitutes also the fundamental presupposition for the mathematical validity of both the accounting equation (financial statements) and the equality of gross value added and net output (national accounts)?

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