Potential Ph.D. Thesis

I'm sitting at home this evening reading work documents (yes, I'm a boring man) when I thought of a good topic for the thesis of an aspiring Ph.D. candidate. 

My idea is what are the post-IPO (initial public offering) returns of companies that were taken private by private equity partnerships and then floated back onto the public markets, particularly over a longer period of time such as two or three years after the companies were re-floated on the market.

Generally, IPOs underperform the market two years after the company becomes a publicly traded company.  It would be interesting to know if companies that were taken private then re-floated a few years later outperformed or underperformed both the market and the universe of IPOs.

Comments

[Dark Space]

And which parties drove that performance - i.e. which underwriters, private equity groups, etc. led to the strongest/weakest returns.

[Magellan]

Toro,

Good to know that in fact you did not disappear... I think posting half a dozen times per month is enough. So keep posting!

As for your PhD idea... I have myself a PhD in the field of Electronics Engineering and I can tell you it was VERY hard work.
The idea you describe is indeed interesting, but this can be done in my opinion by say a journalist or a data miner with an Excel spreadsheet. Certainly not a PhD, at least as I see it from my engineer's eye.

[thesis paper]

Wonderful article, thanks for putting this together! "This is obviously one great post. Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have so provided here. Keep it up!"