Historically, 5% to 8% of U.S. private equity platform acquisitions are made by PE firms outside the U.S.

2019 was the peak for this metric at 7.8%. That is, in 2019, 187 U.S.-based companies were acquired as new platform investments by international PE firms. (Add-on investments include a much larger number of acquisitions by international PE firms.)

The most targeted sectors by international private equity firms in 2021 were: Software, Healthcare, Technology, Data Analytics, and Food & Beverage (in that order).

We’ve been tracking the average number of current portfolio companies held by private equity firms from our M&A Research Database.

We have previously reported that private equity, as an industry, is moving down market, increasingly investing in smaller deals.

Related Posts:

• Private Equity Firms by Deal Size Categories (June 2021)
• Growth in Private Equity Firms Over Time (August 2019)
• Private Equity Moving Down Market (February 2018)

While the migration down market was a trend, this seems to have stabilized, with little change in the last three years. That said, with the previous push down market, there’s now a long tail to the distribution of companies of interest to private equity firms.

So, how small of a company will PE firms still consider for a platform investment?

Our Private Equity Info Research Database shows 228 portfolio companies held by private equity firms in the Supply Chain space, with PE firms showing a substantial increased interest in Supply Chain companies in recent years.

The graph below shows the trend of private equity platform investments in Supply Chain companies over the last 20 years.

Private equity firms acquired 40 Intelligence companies as platform investments in the first half of 2021 (plus a number of add-on acquisitions).

Although Intelligence companies span a spectrum of applications and end markets, many of the 2021 Intelligence acquisitions group into three categories:

Based on acquisition criteria, we have grouped the private equity firms by the typical deal size they seek to acquire. In terms of Enterprise Value…

• Small: $0 – $50 million
• Mid: $50 – $250 million
• Large: $250 – $500 million
• Mega: $500+ million

The graph below shows the median number of current portfolio companies held for PE firms in each deal-size range.

Previously, we ranked the private equity firms based on the number of platform acquisitions per deal maker at the firm – a deal efficiency ranking of sorts.

Below, is a ranking of the private equity firms based on the number of platform acquisitions in the first half of 2021.

Top 25 PE Firms by Number of Platform Portfolio Acquisitions

Instead of providing a general list of the Top 10 Private Equity Firms with the largest, well-known firms, I wanted to identify formidable acquirers that may be lesser-known. To do this, I normalized the number of platform acquisitions for each firm (over the last 12 months) by the number of deal makers at each firm (titles of Vice President and higher).

The lists below show the top 10 most acquisitive private equity firms per deal maker, grouped into categories by deal team size.

The trending private equity investment sectors for May 2021 were Software, Manufacturing, and Retail. Sample transactions are highlighted below.

Years ago, we reported on the trend of private equity firms moving down market, closing smaller deals and moving away from the more competitive landscape of the larger deal space.

Previous Related Posts:

• Private Equity Moving Down Market
• Growth in Private Equity Firms Over Time

To see the effects of this trend now, I grouped the private equity firms from our M&A Research Database into four categories, based on the enterprise value of their typical platform acquisitions (add-on investments excluded).

Size Categories

• Small ($0 – $50 million EV)
• Mid ($50 – $250 million EV)
• Large ($250 – $500 million EV)
• Mega ($500+ million)

Interestingly, approximately half of the private equity firms now focus on smaller deals, with an enterprise value range of $0 – $50 million.

Global PE Firms