SUSTAINABILITY, IMPACT INVESTING AND EXIT STRATEGIES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL-RETURN INVESTMENTS.

The primary intent of this dissertation is to shed light on impact investing's panorama by examining investments differences between impact investing and standard funds. In particular, the thesis aims to examine the exit strategies undergone by the organization when funded in an impact-backed funding round. Over 45 years, the study looked at investment data from almost 683 PE and VC impact-oriented funds (1975- 2019), representing the sample's 4.7 percentage points of the total PE and VC investors. According to the findings, impact investing funds contribute less than non-impact funds by 13.5 percentage points on average and significantly less in the number of investments performed. From an exit perspective, an impact-backed organization has 3.5% more to execute a successful exit than the businesses not been funded by an impact investor. The conclusion was reached after comparing 1095 impact funds to 20,146 traditional funds and was supported by probit (non-linear) regression with a 95% confidence level. The thesis intended to establish the effect of specific characteristics, such as investment type, investor type, investor count, raised amount (in USD), organization total raised amount, and organization total funding rounds, on the number of successful exits executed. As it is possible to see from the regression result, all of these variables influence the performance of an exit.