Real Deals quotes Alexis Karim on larger private equity firms moving into the midmarket
According to an article by Real Deals, large private equity firms are increasingly looking to the EU market for investment opportunities.
The piece notes that the region has in recent months become "more interesting" for these businesses compared to the US, and many of the world's largest private equity companies have moved "to increase their exposure to the continent".
The article goes on to explain that while the money will be going towards a range of different deals of all sorts of different sizes, there also appears to be a rising trend of firms "moving down to smaller deals", with many posting decreases to the average sizes of their deals since 2021 according to some sources of market data.
Alexis Karim, Partner in our Corporate team, explains in the article that there "has been a clear shift in market dynamics, with many of the largest cross-border PE deals now dominated by US-headquartered firms."
But, Alexis adds, pricing remains a challenge, because smaller transactions place greater pressure on fee structures, "making it harder for larger firms to justify their cost base in spaces where margins are tighter [...] Therefore, although larger firms have the resource base and the brand, midmarket firms still retain a competitive edge."
