“It’s the smaller, mid-market players that the banks are coming down harder on, they don’t want to pick fights with the big guys,” Hirsch said.

The CIO remained fairly upbeat on US large and mid-market buyouts, but predicted that holding periods would become longer as the economy weakened. Asia was attracting most of the capital that large private equity investors had reallocated away from the US, Hirsch said, but he questioned whether growth in the region would continue to justify the high prices being paid.