The paper examines the quality of financial statements reported by private equity (PE) backed companies in the years around the initial PE investment. The authors study both pre- and post-investment earnings characteristics of a unique hand-collected sample of 556 Belgian unlisted companies, receiving PE financing between 1985 & 1999, and a matched non-PE backed sample.
Link
http://www.FEB.UGent.be/fac/research/WP/Papers/wp_04_221.pdf