Brazil's policy rate stands at 14.25%, keeping local money in government bonds and private capital scarce. Tim Chamberlain of Brunel Partners argues that distressed specialists who lock in value at entry earn Brazil's best private equity returns.

37% of family offices plan to add direct private equity while 27% plan to cut private debt. The RBC and Campden Wealth survey of 155 offices finds liquidity concerns steering capital toward direct ownership.

American investors have led 80% of European growth rounds over the last decade. Christian Sinding, investment committee chair of EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, argues that Europe needs its own growth leads to build trillion-euro companies at home.

Bain & Company's Global Private Equity Report 2026 reveals that private equity posted its second best year ever in 2025, with buyout deal value surging 44% to $904 billion and exit value jumping 47% to $717 billion. But the recovery was decidedly narrow.

What's New David Sambur, Matt Nord, and Antoine Munfakh, Apollo's co-heads of private equity, make the case in their January 2026 report Private Equity Returns to Its Roots that the asset class must abandon the leverage and multiple expansion playbook that dominated 2010 to 2022 and return to disciplined buying, hands on operational improvement, and flexible exit strategies to generate alpha in a normalized rate environment. Why It Matters Since 2018, capital calls have ex

What's New While most private equity firms chase thematic trends and rely on financial engineering, Brookfield has built a $12.5 billion PE franchise by running toward complexity and embedding operators directly into deal teams. In a recent Fund Shack interview, David Nowak, President of Brookfield's Private Equity Group, explained how the firm's "pilot/co-pilot" model pairs investment professionals with career operators on every transaction, producing over 50% of returns fr

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.