Jeffrey Hooke

Jeff Hooke recently retired from his finance professor position at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Previously, he worked for 35 years as an investment banker and private investment executive for various New York City and Washington, DC firms. He is the author of five books on finance topics and has authored or co-authored multiple academic papers on private equity funds, state pension plans, and non-profit foundation endowments.  Additionally, he has written many pro bono policy papers for regional and national policy groups and testified before many state legislatures on finance subjects.

His latest book, The Myth of Private Equity (Columbia University Press, 2021), is an expose’ of, among other matters, the questionable performance claims of the PE business and the protective ecosphere that enables the business.  His latest academic paper, “Perspectives on the Top LBO Fund Families,” examines the purported results of the top 25 PE-LBO fund families and outlines a track record of mediocrity and unsold deals.   Institutional Investor magazine covered the paper, which is under peer review by a scholarly journal.

A portion of Mr. Hooke’s second book, Security Analysis on Wall Street (John Wiley and Sons, 2^nd edition, 2015) is used in the global CFA exam.

Mr. Hooke has appeared before over a dozen CFA societies around the world. He has spoken on television, radio and podcasts, and he has been quoted in numerous print and on line media, such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Washington Post. His ‘Google Investing’ talk on PE has been downloaded over 200,000 times.