Public Equity or Private Equity

Carlyle and TPG are considering following in the footsteps of Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR and going public, the Financial Times reports. If they do, it's going to be interesting to see how it all works out. One of the supposed advantages of "private equity" is the ability to focus on long-term results rather than the short-term or quarterly results that public companies and analysts of them supposedly place too high a priority on. Going public would seem to signal that the managers of the private equity firms themselves don't make much of the argument that their private structure enables better performance, or, if they do buy the argument, that they are willing to sacrifice the advantages of the private structure for the other advantages that are offered by a public structure.