Since the Financial Crisis in 2008, the performance of publicly-listed private equity firms has been subpar. They have gained from low-interest rates, but have generally underperformed the market due to often misplaced value investments and occasionally failed attempts at shareholder activism. Admittedly, most of those "failed" attempts were in structurally, economically depressed industries like big-box retail and energy. In other words, the problem is not PE managers, it is the environment.
There seems to be a tradeoff between the performance of traditional "turnaround hunting" private equity and its more "growth hunting" brother venture capital. VC