Deal and exit values surged across the global private equity industry in 2025, according to new analysis from Bain & Company, led by chairman Hugh MacArthur. Landmark transactions included the $56.6 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts, Hg’s $6.4 billion take-private of OneStream Software with General Atlantic and Tidemark, and Macquarie’s $40 billion sale of Aligned Data Centers to BlackRock. Sumitomo Corp, SMBC Aviation Capital, Apollo Global Management, Brookfield, Blackstone, Carlyle, Hellman & Friedman, Thoma Bravo and Bain Capital all featured prominently as the industry built momentum heading into 2026.
Private equity spent much of the past three years steadying itself after a period of significant change in interest rates and asset values. New research from Bain & Company shows that 2025 marked a genuine shift in direction, with global buyout deal value climbing 44% to reach $904 billion and exit value rising 47% to $717 billion. Both figures rank among the strongest the industry has ever recorded, trailing only the exceptional totals of 2021.
Much of this growth was driven by a select group of very large transactions, yet the wider market also found firmer ground beneath it. Dry powder available to buyout firms now stands at $1.3 trillion, giving well-prepared firms considerable scope to put capital to work in the year ahead. Chairman Hugh MacArthur describes the period as a bold new era, one in which sharper strategy and faster execution are opening fresh opportunities for those ready to seize them.
A year of record dealmaking
Average disclosed deal size reached an all-time high of $1.2 billion during 2025, a clear example of the scale investors were willing to commit to the right opportunities. The $56.6 billion take-private of Electronic Arts became the largest buyout in history, with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund expected to hold the majority of the equity alongside co-owners Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. Thirteen transactions valued above $10 billion together added $274 billion to the year’s global total.
Several other deals underlined the breadth of opportunity across sectors. Air Lease changed hands for $27.5 billion, with Sumitomo Corp and SMBC Aviation Capital becoming its new majority owners and Apollo Global Management and Brookfield taking minority positions. Walgreens Boots Alliance was acquired for $23.7 billion, while data centre platform Aligned Data Centers sold for $40 billion to Macquarie and a consortium of technology buyers. North America contributed 80% of global growth in deal value, though Europe’s contribution was broadly comparable once the very largest transactions were set aside.
The changing maths of value creation
Generating strong returns has become a more demanding than it was a decade ago. In a typical 2015 buyout, half the purchase price was borrowed at an interest rate of 6% to 7%, and steadily rising asset prices allowed sponsors to benefit from multiple expansion with only modest operational improvement. A target return of 2.5x invested capital over five years required annual earnings growth of around 5%.
Today, with borrowing costs in the 8% to 9% range and leverage ratios closer to 30% to 40%, the same target return requires earnings growth closer to 10% to 12%, according to Bain’s analysis. Purchase multiples remain elevated but largely static, removing a lever that supported a significant share of buyout returns during the previous decade. The shift places far greater weight on how well a firm can improve the underlying performance of a business once it owns it.
This is where firms with a clear, repeatable approach to identifying and building value are pulling ahead. Bain’s research points to full potential due diligence, a multidisciplinary process examining commercial, operational, technology and sustainability factors together, as an increasingly important differentiator. Firms that understand precisely what an asset is capable of before they buy it are better placed to bid with confidence and to begin executing a value creation plan from the first day of ownership.
Exits open the door to liquidity
Buyout-backed exit value climbed 47% year on year to $717 billion, the second-best result on record, driven by a global boom in mergers and acquisitions. Just seven exits valued above $10 billion added $155 billion, or 22%, to the total, including Macquarie’s $40 billion sale of Aligned Data Centers to BlackRock and a consortium of technology companies. Strategic sales such as ECP’s $29.4 billion disposal of Calpine to Constellation and GTCR’s $17.6 billion sale of Worldpay to Global Payments also featured prominently.
Public listings such as Hellman & Friedman, also contributed with a $4.2 billion offering of Sweden’s Verisure and the $7.2 billion listing of Medline, led by Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman. It stood out as the year’s two significant private equity backed IPOs. The Medline listing, the largest PE-backed IPO on record and the largest IPO in four years, arrived at the close of 2025 and is seen by many general partners as an early signal of a more active public offering market in the year ahead.
Continuation vehicles, which allow a fund to return capital to investors while retaining an interest in an asset, grew by 62% year on year, though they still account for less than 10% of total exit value. More than half of general partners surveyed by StepStone and Bain cited the need to return capital to investors as their main reason for launching one, while 42% pointed to securing new capital for acquisitions. Encouragingly, the majority of general partners now expect to complete more exits in 2026 than in the previous year, according to the same survey.
Building the discipline to win the next cycle
Firms that succeed in this environment tend to share a clear sense of what sets them apart, and a willingness to build that advantage into every part of how they operate. Hg’s approach to acquiring OneStream Software illustrates the point well. The cloud-based enterprise finance platform had been on the firm’s radar for years before the $6.4 billion take-private, announced in January 2026 with minority investment from General Atlantic and Tidemark, was agreed.
Rather than treating diligence as a defensive exercise, Hg combined commercial, technical, product, AI and go-to-market analysis into a single unified inquiry. Technical specialists engaged directly with OneStream’s core users to validate workflows and assess the strength of the underlying platform, while commercial teams confirmed that customers valued what the technical findings suggested. The process built the conviction needed to justify a significant premium and gave the firm confidence in a well supported bid.
Bain’s report suggests that generalist strategies, once a viable path to competing at scale, are losing ground to firms able to describe their approach in a single sentence and back it with data on returns and distributions. Dry powder remains close to record levels at $1.3 trillion, giving well positioned firms ample opportunity to put capital to work as conditions continue to improve through 2026.