If there has been a ray of sunshine for the hard-pressed private equity industry since the onset of the financial crisis, emerging markets are surely it.

Private equity funds investing in the developing world have certainly not been immune to the crisis, with new fundraising slumping from $66.5bn (￡43.8bn, €52bn) in 2008 to just $22.6bn last year, according to the Washington-based Emerging Markets Private Equity Association.

Yet investment by emerging market funds accounted for a record 26 per cent of private equity activity last year, up from 14 per cent in 2008 and just 7 per cent in 2004. Furthermore, institutional investors intend to double the proportion of their private equity commitments to emerging markets to between 11 and 15 per cent in the next two years, according to research published in April by the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association and Coller Capital, the global investor in private equity secondaries.