Private equity will likely be strong in the New Year – with some caveats.

Knowledge at Wharton offers this two-part podcast interview on private equity highlights for 2014, and a look ahead to 2015, with Stephen M. Sammut, a senior fellow and lecturer at Wharton, and Michael Rogers, EY’s global deputy private equity leader. U.S. IPO proceeds, and the number of M&As, rose strongly in 2014 and “that generally portends well for private equity,” said Sammut. But “it doesn’t necessarily mean that their rates of return are what the expectations were when the limited partners made their investments seven or eight years ago.” Nevertheless, adds Rogers, “record levels of exit activity are leading a lot of limited partners to re-invest those funds back into the asset class at elevated rates….”