What's Happening Blackstone delivered its third quarter 2025 earnings amid its 40th anniversary celebration, with management declaring the long awaited "deal dam" is finally breaking as capital markets activity resurges and multiple secular growth engines accelerate simultaneously. The quarter demonstrated the firm's unique positioning at the intersection of cyclical recovery and structural transformation in alternatives, with private wealth, insurance, and institutional chan

BlackRock delivered record Q4 2025 results with EPS of $13.16 (beating estimates by 5.79%) and revenue of $7 billion (up 23% YoY), with private markets emerging as the central pillar of its forward strategy. The quarter marks the first full integration of GIP, HPS, and Preqin, positioning BlackRock as a top five alternatives platform with over $675 billion in client assets and a clear runway toward $400 billion in gross private markets fundraising by 2030.

What's New Bain & Company's Global Healthcare Private Equity Report 2026  reveals that global healthcare private equity delivered a record-breaking performance in 2025, with disclosed deal value exceeding an estimated $191 billion—surpassing the previous high set in 2021—while deal volume hit 445 buyouts, marking the second-highest annual total on record despite a second-quarter tariff-related pause. Why It Matters The record performance signals sustained investor confidenc

Private credit tops $1.7T globally, reshaping bank competition while supporting CRE valuations—but recession risks loom.

Morningstar's 2026 Global Outlook Report identifies private markets as the next frontier in portfolio construction, with semiliquid fund assets reaching nearly $450 billion through June 2025—up 77% since 2022—as new vehicle structures and regulatory support make private equity, credit, and real assets accessible to individual investors and retirement plans for the first time at scale.

PitchBook's 2026 US Private Equity Outlook forecasts continued consolidation of fundraising power among top firms and a strategic return to platform LBOs, expected to capture 25% or more of deal activity as financing conditions improve. Through October, platform LBOs accounted for $525.3 billion in deal value—the highest since the 2021 peak.

What's New PitchBook's 2026 Healthcare Outlook calls this "one of the best investing opportunities we have seen in decades" across healthcare subsectors. AI is improving Phase I trial success rates from ~52% to ~80%, potentially more than doubling overall approval likelihood—with early-stage assets that have been "capital-deprived" offering the greatest return profiles. Why It Matters After pandemic-induced capital misallocation, healthcare is structurally de-risking. The r

PitchBook's 2026 Industry PE Outlook provides a sector-by-sector roadmap, highlighting commercial aerospace parts, electrical engineering for datacenters, and health & wellness as top investment targets. Platform LBOs are expected to capture 25%+ of deal activity, signaling a return to scale-building strategies.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management's 2026 Investment Outlook reveals that private equity valuations have reached record highs at the median, while roughly 15% of private credit borrowers can't cover interest payments—signaling that manager selection and disciplined underwriting will separate winners from losers as exit activity accelerates.

Private markets emerged from a three-year fog in 2025—but into an environment of radical transformation rather than simple recovery. Global buyout dealmaking hit $2 trillion (+14% YoY), the third-most-active year on record. For the first time since 2015, distributions to LPs finally exceeded capital contributions. Yet underneath these headline numbers, the industry confronted existential questions about its business model, investor base, and relationship with regulators.

What's New Morgan Stanley Investment Management's 2026 Private Equity and Private Credit Outlooks signal a decisive inflection point for alternative investments, with M&A activity recovering from a three-decade low relative to GDP and private credit yields expected to remain elevated in the 8.0-8.5% range despite rate cuts. The reports highlight that PE-backed companies leveraging AI adoption are creating a widening performance gap, while scaled private credit platforms are p

Apollo Global Management's 2026 Private Equity Outlook, authored by David Sambur and Matt Nord, Partners and Co-Heads of Equity, reveals that the biggest opportunities are emerging from market inefficiencies created by index crowding, capital stress, and neglected industrial assets—areas where disciplined buyers can exploit valuation gaps that passive investing has created.

Federated Hermes' Private Markets 2026 Outlook reveals that deal activity is gaining positive momentum following interest rate normalization in H2 2025, positioning private asset classes to deliver greater capital distributions from older vintages—which should fuel new allocations toward specialist strategies rather than generalist, diversified approaches.

Markets near historic highs demand disciplined investing as PE activity rebounds and AI drives USD 1T opportunity.

Dechert's 2026 Global Private Equity Outlook reveals that global buyout deal value reached $965.8 billion through Q3 2025, representing a 30% increase from the same period in 2024, signaling the PE industry is gradually emerging from nearly three years of constrained deal activity and challenging fundraising conditions despite ongoing tariff volatility and geopolitical uncertainty.

Robert F. Smith, founder, chairman, and CEO of $100 billion Vista Equity Partners, argues that companies lacking "sovereignty and dominion" over their proprietary workflows and data sets face existential threats in this new era, while incumbents positioned correctly could see operating margins surge from 25% to 40% and beyond.

According to a recent academic study by Ludovic Phalippou, Professor of Financial Economics at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, private capital fund managers have accumulated more than $1 trillion in carried interest—the performance-based compensation known as "carry"—from funds raised between 2000 and 2019.

According to KPMG's 2025 Global PE Value Creation Survey, private equity firms face an inflection point as traditional strategies of financial leverage and multiple expansion fade. With fundraising contracting by 12% CAGR from 2021-2025, median holding periods exceeding six years, and over $3 trillion in unsold assets, PE firms must pivot from "stock-picking" to systematic, data-driven value creation to deliver expected returns.

According to PitchBook's Q3 2025 US PE Breakdown, private equity deal activity posted strong quarterly growth with $331.1 billion across 2,347 transactions in Q3 2025—a 28% sequential increase and 38% year-over-year gain. The resurgence follows a brief Q2 air pocket and comes as recession risk drops below 10%, Federal Reserve rate cuts take effect, and major indices reach new highs.

Apollo's Kleinman warns PE exits face years of headwinds while AI valuations show dangerous froth despite transformative potential.