The Cambridge Associates LLC Australia Private Equity and Venture Capital Index (CA Australia Index) continues to outperform the S&P/ASX 300 Index over multiple time horizons.

The CA Australia Index, which measures private equity and venture capital returns in Australia, also outperforms other key asset benchmarks over a number of different time periods.

For the quarter ended 30 June 2011, the CA Australia Index had annualised returns of 8.59%, 2.42%, 4.23% and 7.81% over one, three, five and 10 years respectively.

The index's quarterly return of 3.18% also compares favourably against minus 4.26% for the S&P/ASX 300 Index, 2.3% for the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Index and minus 9.31% for the UBS Australian Composite Bond Index.

The Australian industry benchmark is even more impressive in US dollar terms, with one?, three? and five?year annualized returns of 37.63%, 8.33% and 12.66% respectively.

Australian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (AVCAL) CEO Dr Katherine Woodthorpe said: "The index demonstrates that private equity is overall delivering substantial - and importantly, consistent - net returns to investors over multiple time horizons. The increased number of exits this year has also seen many of these investments delivering excellent returns to the pension funds and other institutional funds who are the primary investors in this asset class."

"We have been very pleased with the response from the Australian private equity and venture capital fund manager community. Since we began releasing the benchmark five quarters ago, the number of participating funds has increased by more than 60 percent," said Eugene Snyman, Managing Director at Cambridge Associates' office in Sydney, Australia.

This is the fifth quarterly report from the Index, which is a result of a strategic partnership between AVCAL and Cambridge Associates, global provider of independent research and investment consulting services.