TWO AND TWENTY

TWO AND TWENTY offers a peek behind the industry curtain of private equity, revealing how the world's most aggressive and successful financial animals spot opportunities, win deals, and the mindset it takes to thrive in a high-stakes and often misunderstood field.

Private equity was once an investment niche, with the industry managing just $500 billion. No more. Today that number exceeds $7 trillion for all forms of private capital, with leading firms directing more money than some countries' entire GDPs. The industry has overtaken investment banking - and well-known names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citi - as the premier destination for ambitious financial talent, as well as the investment dollars of some of the world's largest pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments. At private equity's pinnacle are the firms' partners, happy to earn "two and twenty" - that is, a flat yearly fee of 2 percent of a fund's capital, on top of 20 percent of the investment spoils.

The private equity industry has succeeded in near-stealth - until now. In TWO AND TWENTY, Sachin Khajuria, a former partner at the elite private equity firm Apollo, takes an unapologetic yet critical look in the mirror, giving readers an unprecedented view inside an opaque and rapidly expanding engine of the global economy. From how to "think like a principal, not an advisor" to "respond, don't react," Khajuria brings the habits of the industry's leading practitioners to life through a series of vivid and unvarnished deal sketches, illuminating how their traits, culture and temperament lead to consistent market-beating returns.

TWO AND TWENTY is an unflinching examination of the mindset that drives the most influential and least understood center of financial power and a call to action for people to start paying closer attention to a key industry underpinning global retirement systems - a field that has become a punching bag for some and the source of envy for countless others.
A great read for fans of books about finance, including Scott Patterson's The Quants, Ray Dalio's Principles, MBA students exploring careers in private equity, or anyone aspiring to financial dominance.

Sachin Khajuria is a former partner at Apollo, one of the world's largest alternative asset management firms, and is also an investor in funds managed by Blackstone and Carlyle, among other investment firms. He has twenty-five years of investment and finance experience. Sachin holds two degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge. He divides his time between New York, Switzerland, and London.