05/01/24

PRIVATE EQUITY: Wealth managers predict global private equity comeback in 2024

As published on: spearswms.com, Friday 5 January, 2024.

After signs of a sluggish 2023 for PE funds and M&A activity globally, there are signs of optimism for 2024.

Private markets globally are poised for a bumper year after a sluggish 2023, with strong interest from family offices and ultra-high-net-worth investors.

Away from the billion-pound deals, which are often the preserve of institutional-level investors and large corporates, many UHNWs and family offices are looking to invest in private equity stakes in 2024, often un-reliant on debt-financing and less perturbed by high interest rates and lingering uncertainty.

There’s ‘plenty of activity’ and interest from UHNW investors who are looking to deploy their cash, veteran M&A adviser Jim Keeling tells Spear’s. ‘We’re selling businesses worth between £10 and £200 million, broadly speaking, and the buyers of those businesses are not nearly as beholden to gearing up their acquisitions as buyers of much bigger businesses are.’

‘[That] end of the market is not hit as much as the headlines that one reads about. The much, much bigger deals have been slowing up a bit, but I don’t think it really impacts on the buyers at our end of the market.’

Keeling says it’s ‘perfectly possible’ that 2024 could be a record year for his M&A advisory outfit, Corbett Keeling. While a post-pandemic exhaustion ‘had an impact’ on the number of businesses coming to market in 2022 and 2023, Keeling says ‘that has largely passed now,’ with UHNW entrepreneurs interested in selling because they have now reached a stage where they are eager to consider exits.

After a difficult year in 2023 for private equity and M&A activity, where a mismatch in expectations over valuations between buyers and sellers contributed to one of the worst years for the sector since the global financial crash, many investors expect activity to pick up this year.

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Private Equity Wealth management 2024