stock markets vs private equity

Interesting perspecitve clipped from here.

Brett Arends, Marketwatch

if Amalgamated Widgets is currently trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $50 a share, but under the right management, and with the right strategy, it should really be worth $100 a share, you would expect the public markets to get it there. You would expect stockholders would get the upside at least into the $90 to $100 range. You would not expect, in an “efficient” market, for AW to drift around at $50 or so, maybe for years, before being taken over by a private-equity firm for $60 … and then sold back to the stock market five years later at $120.

Private equity consistently beats the market, by an order of magnitude.