Private Equity Market Data: Deals, Exits, Funds and Debt

Introduction

PitchBook counts about $1.16 trillion of US private equity (PE) deals in 2025. Bain counts $904 billion of buyouts across the whole world in the same year. Read as two measures of one thing, the figures say the US alone outran the planet by a quarter of a trillion dollars, which cannot be true, and the slip behind that reading is a common one with sponsor market data. PitchBook's total includes add-ons, growth investments and estimates for deals whose price was never disclosed; Bain's leaves add-ons out and sums buyouts announced worldwide. Both are correct on their own terms. Read survey by survey, the latest figures tell one consistent story: a 2025 rebound carried by large deals, a first half of 2026 in which deal value fell while deal counts held, exits that recovered in value without shrinking the unsold inventory, fundraising pooling in the largest managers, and the syndicated loan market taking buyout financing back from direct lenders. Each reading below comes with the rules for quoting it and what it changes in the requests sponsors bring to their banks.

Five publishers supply the figures used here, and they disagree less about the market than about what counts as a deal. Bain & Company's Global Private Equity Report, built on Dealogic and other data, counts buyouts worldwide by announcement date, including deals completed or still pending, and excludes add-ons, special purpose acquisition companies, loan-to-own transactions and purchases of bankrupt assets. PitchBook publishes a quarterly US breakdown covering every private equity deal type, with estimates for late-reporting and undisclosed deals. EY's Private Equity Pulse reports sponsor acquisitions and announced exits worldwide, Invest Europe surveys European firms on the equity they raise, invest and realize, and PitchBook's leveraged loan unit, LCD, tracks the loans that finance the deals.

The table resolves the opening paradox: PitchBook counts more kinds of transaction and fills in unpublished prices, while Bain counts fewer kinds across more countries. Neither is "the" size of the market.

Buyout Deal Value

The total transaction value a survey assigns to the leveraged buyouts it records in a period. What it includes varies by publisher: Bain excludes add-ons and counts announced deals that are completed or pending, while PitchBook's private equity totals include add-ons, growth deals and estimated values for undisclosed transactions.

Value, Count and the Deals Nobody Priced

A survey publishes two series that often move apart: deal value and deal count. Most sponsor transactions are private, many never disclose a price, and a handful of very large deals can swing a year's value while barely moving the count. Bain's record average disclosed deal size of about $1.2 billion in 2025 is an average over deals with a published price, which skews toward large and public targets. PitchBook reduces that skew by estimating the missing prices, at the cost of putting modeled numbers inside its totals.

Equity value is a third basis. Invest Europe measures the equity amount funds invest, not the enterprise value of the companies they buy, so its buyout figure is smaller than any deal-value count of the same companies, and its exit figures are recorded at the cost of the original investment rather than at sale price.

Announcement Dates and Periods Still Being Filled

Bain dates a deal by announcement, so the Electronic Arts take-private signed in September 2025 sits in the 2025 total although it completed only in August 2026. Bain keeps deals that are completed or still pending, so one abandoned later drops out and the year can be restated, which is why announced and closed are different claims. Period labels need the same care: a first-half figure is not half a year, a quarter-on-quarter fall is not a year-on-year fall, and quarterly totals get revised as late-reporting deals arrive. PitchBook issues preliminary totals within days of a quarter's end and revises them in its full breakdown weeks later, which is why the figures here come from the full reports.

The deal story across both periods is a story about average size. In 2025 the value of sponsor deals rose far faster than their number, carried by megadeals and take-privates. In the first half of 2026 the reverse happened: counts held or rose while value fell, as the largest transactions disappeared. The cycle from the 2021 peak through the rate reset, and the named megadeals that defined the rebound (Electronic Arts, Walgreens, Dayforce, Jeppesen, Hologic and Skechers among them), are traced in the buyout cycle from peak to megadeal rebound.

Full-Year 2025: Fewer Deals, More Value

Bain's Global Private Equity Report 2026 puts 2025 buyout deal value at $904 billion, up 44%, across 3,018 deals, down 6%. Just 13 deals of $10 billion or more accounted for $274 billion of the global gain, 11 of them in the US, and public-to-private transactions made up roughly half of the growth in value. North America contributed 80% of the increase. Excluding the deals above $10 billion, Bain still records growth of 16%, so the rebound was broader than the megadeals alone, but they set its scale.

Megadeal

A transaction above a size threshold that each data provider sets for itself, not a market standard. PitchBook's US reports use $2.5 billion and above for megadeals and $1 billion and above for mega-exits, while Bain's 2025 analysis singles out the bracket of $10 billion and above, so a "megadeal share" must always carry its threshold.

First Half of 2026: Count Held, Value Fell

The turn shows most clearly in PitchBook's Q2 2026 US PE Breakdown. Second-quarter US deal value fell to $177.3 billion, down 37.5% on the first quarter and 23.9% on a year earlier, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2023, while 2,384 announced and estimated deals were flat on the quarter and up 11.5% year on year. First-half value of $461 billion was 10.6% below the first half of 2025 and well below the $647.8 billion of the second half. The losses sat at the top: megadeals of $2.5 billion or more produced only $25.9 billion across five transactions, and take-private value fell 90.1% on the quarter to $6.2 billion across 11 deals. Add-ons stayed about three-quarters of buyouts, the pattern behind platform and add-on strategy, and software value fell 65.7% year on year to $10.7 billion, the reset described in the software-as-a-service valuation reset and private equity writedowns.

Globally the picture is milder. EY's Private Equity Pulse for the second quarter of 2026 counts first-half acquisitions down 10% with aggregate value roughly flat at about $341 billion, against about $353 billion a year earlier: tech-focused value halved to about $36 billion while other sectors rose 9% to about $305 billion, and US-focused value fell 25%. Bain's Private Equity Midyear Report 2026 names three shocks behind the stall: a software sell-off driven by artificial intelligence (AI) disruption fears, redemption stress in private credit and the war in Iran with the oil price spike that followed.

Outside the US: Europe and Japan

Invest Europe records €90 billion of buyout equity invested in European companies in 2025, close to 2024 and 16% above the previous five-year average. Bain's Japan report, released in June 2026, counts ¥4.8 trillion of Japanese private equity deal value in 2025, the fifth straight year above ¥3 trillion, with take-privates about half of the total and deals above ¥100 billion about 70%. Japan, Europe and the Gulf sovereigns are compared in regional sponsor markets.

Exit data split along two lines: exit value against exit count, and the exit route the sale took, and no two of the five sources below measure exactly the same thing.

A US series falling 12% and a global series rising 9% over the same half are not in conflict: they cover different geographies on different bases.

Full-Year 2025 and the Route Mix

Bain's 2025 exit rebound was led by strategic buyers: sales to corporates grew 66% globally, 73% in North America and 82% in Europe. Sponsor-to-sponsor exits grew 21% globally, and Bain notes that North American sponsor sales would have fallen 19% without one large data center deal. Initial public offering (IPO) value rose 36% from a small base, with two listings standing out: Verisure at $4.2 billion and Medline at $7.2 billion, both sized by Bain with their over-allotments. Route by route, including the IPO window and the backlog, the detail is in sponsor exit trends by route.

Continuation vehicles show how a share depends on its denominator. Bain puts them at less than 10% of total private equity exit value, while Jefferies' 2025 secondary market review puts GP-led secondaries at about 14% of sponsor-backed exit volume: a broader category set against a different base. Recap, continuation vehicle and net asset value loan volumes, and what limited partners make of them, are covered in liquidity without a sale.

First Half of 2026: US Down, Global Up

PitchBook's US exit value fell to $102.6 billion in the second quarter, down 46.3% on the quarter and 7.4% on a year earlier, across 353 exits, and mega-exits of $1 billion or more made up more than 61% of the quarter's value. Public listings were the one route to grow: IPO value rose 42.2% on the quarter to $27.6 billion across 12 listings, 30.5% of quarterly exit value, with a median IPO of $2.8 billion, while corporate acquisitions fell 63.5% to $38.5 billion and sponsor-to-sponsor sales 57% to $24.5 billion. A window that opens only for scaled assets is the backdrop to the PE-backed sponsor IPO backlog. PitchBook also counted 69 continuation-fund-related exits globally in the half, below the pace needed to match 2025's 158.

EY's global count moved the other way, with announced exit value up 9% and trade sales at 71% of exit value against a typical share of about two-thirds. The likelier explanation is coverage and basis, worldwide announced exits against US exits with estimates, rather than two views of the same deals.

Europe at Sale Price and at Cost

Europe shows the starkest basis effect. Bain's European strategic exits rose 82% in 2025 and sponsor-to-sponsor sales 56%, measured at sale value. Invest Europe's 2025 activity report records buyout divestments of €32.5 billion, down 7%, with sale to another private equity firm the main route at 47% of the amount.

Divestment at Cost

Invest Europe's measure of exits: the amount originally invested in the companies a fund sold, not the price received. A profitable exit therefore appears at a fraction of its sale value, so the series tracks how much invested capital left portfolios rather than the proceeds funds collected.

Both figures are right. One reports what buyers paid in a year of large strategic purchases, the other what funds had paid for the stakes they sold, so the largest corporate deals dominate the first while the second weights each stake by its original price.

Capital raised and capital borrowed are the two inputs to future deals, and both shifted in the latest data. Fundraising concentrated in established managers, and in the US the syndicated loan market took back much of the buyout financing that direct lenders had won.

Capital Raised and Who Raised It

Bain counts buyout fundraising of $395 billion in 2025, down 16%, with the number of buyout funds closed down 23%, while total private capital raised held near $1.3 trillion. The US-only series shows the same thinning in more detail: PitchBook records $308 billion closed across 551 funds in 2025 and $159.6 billion across 223 funds in the first half of 2026. Concentration is the sharper signal. Funds under $1 billion drew just 16.7% of 2026 commitments, experienced managers raised $139.3 billion against $20.3 billion for emerging ones, and only 23 first-time funds closed in the half, against an average of 181 a year from 2021 to 2023. Evergreen vehicles are the growth channel, with US evergreen private equity assets nearly doubling in about a year to roughly $99 billion by March 31.

Europe ran against the global trend. Invest Europe counts €147 billion of private equity and venture fundraising in 2025, up 16% and second only to 2022, with buyout funds up 33% to €103 billion and North American investors supplying nearly 30% of European buyout capital. The link between slow distributions and slow fundraising, which Bain measures as distributions below 15% of net asset value for four years running, runs through the dry powder and distribution clocks; concentration and evergreen capital are the subject of sponsor fundraising and the concentration at the top.

Who Financed the Buyouts

PitchBook LCD's loan data, in the same breakdown, supply the financing reading. The broadly syndicated loan market took the majority of US buyout financing volume in the first half of 2026, reversing several years in which direct lenders led, although sponsor activity in that market fell 38% in the second quarter as new deals dried up. Sponsors spent the quarter on liabilities rather than acquisitions: sponsor-backed borrowers accounted for just 45% of non-refinancing loan issuance against a five-year average of about 70%, but 53% of refinancing volume and 74% of maturity extension amendments. Private credit's second-quarter sponsor deal volume fell to less than half of the first quarter's, in a half that also brought the fund redemption pressure examined in private credit stress in 2026, and on a thin sample buyout spreads widened to an average of 509 basis points over the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), from 474 in the first quarter.

The 2025 flows in both directions between the two markets are set out in syndicated versus private credit, and the share battle itself, including where banks have won back large deals, in private credit versus banks.

The banks that cover sponsors, through a financial sponsors group (FSG) and the product teams behind it, earn fees on the transactions these series count, so each reading translates into a different mandate mix. The loan data show it most directly: a quarter in which sponsors borrowed mainly to amend existing debt fills the calendar with the hold-period work described in refinancings and repricings for portfolio companies. Read together, the latest figures point to five shifts:

The same readings demand keeping results apart from forecasts. PitchBook's expectation that activity will firm into year-end if the energy shock fades and the rate path clears is a conditional forecast. EY's finding that 72% of general partners expect deployment to rise over six months, and 56% expect exits to accelerate meaningfully, is a survey of intentions. Bain's use of non-disclosure agreement data from Ontra, pointing to roughly flat deal flow through July 2026, is a leading indicator. Each belongs beside the forecasts weighed in the sponsor market outlook, not in a sentence that reports what happened.

What the first half of 2026 left unresolved is whether exits will follow the deal count or the deal value. If sponsors keep selling at the smaller sizes they are now buying, the inventory starts to clear through many mid-sized auctions and the work spreads across sale, financing and add-on mandates. If realizations keep depending on a few large strategic sales and listings, value will look healthy while most funds keep waiting, and the requests reaching banks will stay weighted toward refinancings, recaps and continuation vehicles. The next full-year reports from Bain and PitchBook will show which of the two the market chose.