Paper Title
Private Equity Investment: An Empirical Study in the Mena Region

Abstract
The purpose of this paper has two fold. First, it explores and describes the factors that affect the private equity (PE) sector. Those factors are the stock market development, the availability of debt financing, the size of the economy, GDP growth, the legal environment, public policy, capital gain tax, research and development and labor market severity. Second, this paper analyses the structure of the Private Equity investment in different sectors in the MENA region. The type of research that will be used in this study is quantitative research. Data were collected from several resources. The private equity investment values and transactions in Seventeen MENA region countries as well as data related to private equity investment in different sectors and industries were collected from ZAWYA Data base. These data collected were for transactions between the years 2000 and 2015. The results of this paper found that around two third of the PE sector comes from non-manufacturing companies and one third from manufacturing companies. PE sector has seen a steady growth up to 2008 followed by a sharp decline after the global financial crisis. Moreover, The MENA PE sector followed the global trend, except for an additional crisis in 2011 caused by the Arab spring. For both crises, the non-manufacturing sector has been more resilient than the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the four most significant countries in terms of private equity investment values and transaction frequencies in the MENA region were UAE, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Keywords - Private Equity; MENA Region; PE Investment; Arab Spring.