Greg Brown

Research Director, IPC; Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Email: gregwbrown@unc.edu

Greg Brown’s research centers on alternative investments, including hedge funds and private equity funds. He also is a leading expert on financial risk and the use of derivative contracts as risk management tools.

He is the founder and research director of the Institute for Private Capital, faculty director of the Hodges Scholars Program and a member of the Private Equity Research Consortium (PERC) advisory board. Dr. Brown served as the executive director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise from 2015-2023.

His research has been published in leading academic and practitioner finance journals, including The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Derivatives, The Journal of Portfolio Management and The Financial Analyst Journal. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative Investments.

Dr. Brown serves on the board of directors of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association.

He previously served as director of research for Amundi Smith Breeden, a global asset management firm specializing in fixed income investments. He has served as a consultant on financial risk and portfolio management for money management firms, the U.S. government, non-profits and Fortune 500 companies.

Prior to joining UNC Kenan-Flagler, he worked at the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in the division of research and statistics. He also worked in artist relations for a subsidiary of Capitol Records.

He received his PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin and his BS with honors in physics and economics from Duke University.

Related Publications

Evergreen vs. Drawdown Funds: Risk, Returns and Cash Flows

Evergreen funds are a rapidly growing segment of the private capital universe. While open-ended structures have existed for decades in some asset classes such as real estate, the more recent products have included a broader set of assets such as private equity and credit.
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What Do We Know About Institutional-Quality Hedge Funds?

Using publicly available sources such as trade press and Form ADV filings, we compile a list of 561 “institutional-quality” hedge fund managers that each have at least 1 billion USD in primary hedge fund assets under management.


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Risk-Adjusted Performance of Private Funds: What Do We Know?

In this IPC white paper, we examine the historical risk-adjusted performance of private funds across diverse asset classes and geographies using the most comprehensive and current dataset to date.
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Optimal Hedge Fund Allocation

This study addresses the optimal asset allocation problem for investors managing a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, and hedge funds. Significant allocations to hedge funds may be justified due to their diversification benefits, even when hedge funds generate minimal or no alpha.
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Do GP Commitments Matter?

It is standard practice for private equity general partners (GPs) to commit capital to a fund alongside limited partners (LPs). Despite the ubiquity of the practice, and the belief that it aligns GP-LP incentives, there is almost no large-sample empirical analysis of GP commitments. In this analysis, we seek to fill the gap in research...


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Related News

What Investors Need to Know to Value Private Portfolios: Interview with IPC’s Greg Brown

Gregory Brown, Research Director for the Institute for Private Capital and Professor of Finance at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School recently spoke with CIO Magazine Executive Editor Amy Resnick about his research and what investors should know when valuing illiquid assets.
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New Analysis Finds SBICs Outperform Peers

In a new IPC study "The Performance of Small Business Investment Companies", we find that Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs) funds perform quite well relative to non-SBIC peers in IRR, MOIC, and PME, yielding both positive average and median peer-adjusted performance.


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Can Investors Time Their Exposure to Private Equity?

Private equity markets are highly cyclical. The aggregate amount of capital committed to the sector varies substantially from peak to trough, and many have observed that periods of high fundraising activity are followed by periods of low absolute performance for the asset class (see Harris, Jenkinson, and Kaplan, among others). This raises an important question: is it possible to market-time the allocations to private equity to avoid the cyclicality of performance?
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Business and Economic Impact of COVID-19

To help separate fact from fiction and legitimate concern from panic, the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School convened six top faculty researchers to discuss the likely effects of the pandemic on business and the economy.
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Have Private Equity Returns Really Declined?

Kenan Institute Executive Director Greg Brown and University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Steve Kaplan have co-authored a new white paper assembling the most current, comprehensive performance data on U.S. private equity buyout funds available. Contrary to some recent articles, this research shows U.S. buyouts have consistently outperformed public markets in the post-crisis era.
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