2025年度美国PE细分（英）

Contents Institutional Research Group Jinny ChoiSenior Research Analyst,Private Equityjinny.choi@pitchbook.com A word from CohnReznick6 Deals8 Kyle WaltersResearch Analyst, Private Equitykyle.walters@pitchbook.com Deal valuation metrics 17 Kenny Tang Credit market conditions18 Senior Director,US Credit Researchkenny.tang@pitchbook.com Deals by size, backing type, and sector22 Jim CorridoreLead Research Analyst,Industrialsjim.corridore@pitchbook.com Spotlight: US leveraged loan dividend payouts hitpost-GFC high23 Brian WrightLead Research Analyst,Healthcarebrian.wright@pitchbook.com Exits 25 Fundraising 31 pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com Performance 36 Published on January 13, 2025 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PE roars back to life and intoanother $1 trillion year PE activity overview US private equity hit a rough patch early in 2025, despiteexpectations of a surge driven by improving market sentiment,post-election clarity, and the anticipation of business-friendlypolicies. Unpredictable tariff announcements and the resultingmarket volatility caused dealmakers to press pause in Q2,as GPs waited for clarity on macroeconomic risks, financingconditions, and valuation issues. Fortunately, this pause ended,and markets shifted back toward a risk-on stance by the thirdquarter. PE activity rebounded strongly in the second half of2025, compensating for lost time from the cautious slowdownseen in Q2. This fervor has driven 2025 PE deal activity above9,000 deals worth an aggregate value of $1.2 trillion. 2025marks the second time in the asset class’s history that dealvalue has exceeded $1 trillion, following the 2021 peak ofnearly $1.3 trillion. securing impressive exit sizes, it remains to be seen howquickly the rest of the PE inventory will be able to exit. Improvedmarket sentiment and IPO conditions are likely to create moreexit opportunities for PE-backed companies, especially forthose that had been ready to go public but were held back bythe US government shutdown bottleneck and are now poised toemerge in early 2026. Fundraising remains the only weak link for PE, with significantYoY declines in both fund count and capital raised. 2025ended as the weakest year for PE capital formation since2020. Although exit activity continues to increase, it has notyet reached a sufficient pace to expand fundraising efforts,and we expect 2026 to face a similar situation due to trends inmanager consolidation. Limited capital availability for LPs hascreated a fundraising environment where LPs prioritize long-standing relationships with GPs or larger managers with strongtrack records and multiple strategies under their umbrella,often at the expense of smaller or newer managers seeking toraise capital. Those that have been able to raise capital havedone so in line with historical fundraising timelines, leading toongoing PE dry powder accumulation. PE dry powder has risento its highest level ever, reaching $1.1 trillion, though it is likelyto decrease as deal activity surpasses fundraising efforts. Sponsors pressed forward with renewed investor appetite,and in doing so, increasingly turned to mega-sizedtransactions. Deals over $1 billion hit new heights in 2025,with 150 megadeals totaling $567.8 billion. While thenumber of megadeals remains just below 2021 levels, totalmegadeal value has already surpassed 2021’s $528.2 billion,underscoring the outsized scale of the largest transactionsin 2025. Looking forward, the outlook for PE deal activity ispositive: Improved market sentiment and clarity, ample drypowder of over $1 trillion in the US market alone, and increasedaccess to financing point to continued strength in dealmaking.The US Federal Reserve’s (the Fed’s) third interest rate cutbefore year-end will likely carry this deal momentum into thenew year, but we expect sponsors to fully leverage the PEstrategy to find opportunities across all types of deal activity. Exit activity is now clearly out of the woods, securing notonly a second consecutive year of growth but also a reboundthat ranks second only to the record levels seen in 2021. Exitactivity has remained muted in recent years—PE firms opted tohold the majority of assets longer amid valuation uncertainty,while only a handful of assets were able to exit at attractiveprices. In 2025, however, the US PE industry achieved double-digit YoY growth in exit count for the first time in the past fouryears. This rise in the number of exits is an encouraging signof more assets moving through the system. Still, mega-sizedexits played a critical role in increasing the year’s exit value,accounting for more than double what mega-exits contributedin 2024. While large companies have been successful in A WORD FROM COHNREZNICKThe evolving M&A landscape: A Q&A with CohnReznick Given the tumult across multiple markets and sectors in 2025,which do you think are the most underappreciated trends froma technological standpoint for PE firms and the broader PEecosystem to track