Private equity exit value has fallen 66% in two years from US$1,694.1 billion in 2021 to US$574.2 billion in 2023, according to new data from Pitchbook.
Globally, private equity firms made 26.6% less last year from sales of portfolio companies than the US$782.5 billion that they amassed in 2022.
The number of exits, which are either sales or public listings of private equity-owned companies, fell to 2,415 in 2023, little more than half of the 4,226 exits that took place in 2021, and significantly less than the 3,528 exit deals that occured in 2022.
This was as global private equity firms continued to amass vast amounts of new capital in their funds, with dry powder, or unspent capital, in the asset class surpassing US$5 trillion.