Centre for Private Equity and MBO Research
Professor Mike Wright launched CMBOR at the University of Nottingham in March 1986. It was co-sponsored by Barclays Development Capital (later to become Equistone Europe Partners) and Spicer and Pegler. Equistone remain a much-valued sponsor and have consistently been a cornerstone of CMBOR’s finance throughout its history.
CMBOR’s aim was to monitor the private equity management buyout market and provide objective intelligence on the market. So, the database was launched to meet increased demands from the financial media, practitioners, and policy-makers to better understand the market.
Mike was fond of telling the story of Brian Chiplin advising him that management buyouts were a fad and he was wasting his academic career developing CMBOR. However, within a few years, Brian joined Mike as a director of CMBOR, helping establish the database as an authoritative source of data on management buyouts and private equity.
From early on CMBOR has monitored the evolution in the size of the market, types and sizes of deals, funding structures, private equity (PE) investors, deal value, and exit value. To maintain relevance to media and practitioners, CMBOR expanded its database to include management buyins, buyouts of failed firms, exit mode, longevity, and failure.
The database has been a valuable resource in producing academic output. Exploring many aspects of the impact of private equity on the firms they invest in, connecting academic and policy debates in a variety of areas: corporate governance, privatisation, transition and emerging economies, employee effects, entrepreneurial finance, innovation, succession in family firms. Academics from around the world, collaborating with CMBOR, have used the database in the production of research on these subjects.
In 2011, Mike moved to Imperial College Business School, taking CMBOR with him. Even though CMBOR had moved, the impact of its research and knowledge exchange with the likes of the BVCA, US Government Accountability Office, ICAEW, and Bank of England resulted in the Research Excellence Framework giving CMBOR the highest rating for its impact case.
On 25 November 2019, Mike passed away. The driving force and energy behind CMBOR was no longer with us. Imperial College did not envision CMBOR continuing without Mike, but with Imperial College’s support, CMBOR returned home to University of Nottingham in May 2021. Dr Kevin Amess is the current Director and he looks forward to working with those that are passionate about continuing CMBOR’s work on improving understanding of private equity and management buyouts.
We actively seek to collaborate with academics passionate about researching private equity. Academics from any institution can freely access the database when collaborating with a scholar from Nottingham University Business School.
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