A study of our private equity fund data shows the bulk of the $1.8 trillion in private equity assets are concentrated within a small number of PE firms.
- The largest 1% of funds represent 22% of the total private equity assets under management (AuM). Further, these top 1% of funds are operated by only 34 unique private equity firms.
- The top 5% of funds (122 unique PE firms) control nearly half of all private-equity-managed assets.
Although the mega funds control a disproportionate percentage of the total AuM, there is a long tail to the distribution of assets on the lower end of the market.
So while the top 50% of funds control 96% of all private equity assets, the remaining 4% of assets is still $75 billion dollars. This is a sizable amount of capital deployed to mid-market companies by 3,200 funds.
Consequently, if your firm offers sell-side advisory services, and you think your client’s company might be too small to attract the attention of the private equity universe because they have traditionally looked at much larger deals, this may no longer be the case.
