It's not easy to get an interview with a private equity firm. If you do, you probably don't want to commit the cardinal sin of "failing to think like a buyer" during the case study interview. You also don't want to mention the name of Oxford University professor of financial economics Ludovic Phalippou.
If you speak Phalippou's name, your interview may be over.
Phalippou has been a thorn in the side of private equity firms for 15 years. His fundamental claim, articulated in his 2019 paper, 'An Inconvenient Fact: Private Equity Returns & The Billionaire Factory', is that the private equity industry doesn't generate returns higher than investments in index funds.