Ten years ago Bain Capital set out to analyse the private equity sector’s so-called secret sauce. The $100 billion investor put to work a team of analysts to gather data on deals by the top 25 private equity shops, itself included, hunting for patterns in how they made money. The analysts got a surprise.

The study, which looked at buyout deals across a period of 30 years, showed the “vast majority” of the profits in the industry had been generated by the cheapest deals, says Daniel Rasmussen