Europe’s time to shine in Private Equity

In a world reshaped by higher interest rates, shifting geopolitics, and the return of real capital costs, Europe’s private equity market is quietly distinguishing itself, for all the right reasons. While headlines tend to focus on the scale of U.S. mega-funds or the momentum of emerging Asia, Europe has become the market where discipline, grounded valuations, and structural resilience meet. It’s increasingly where investors are discovering genuine, risk-adjusted opportunities.

Over the past decade, European secondaries funds have consistently delivered net returns in the 12–17% range, often outperforming their U.S. peers as shown below. But what matters even more than the figures are how those returns have been generated — driven by fundamentals such as topline growth and margin expansion.

In today’s environment where liquidity is no longer abundant and interest rates have firmly returned in positive territory, Europe’s private equity market has demonstrated that alpha built on fundamentals endures far longer than alpha built on leverage.

The region’s diversity of economies, regulations, and cultures pushes investors to specialise and truly understand their markets. Europe is a mosaic of mid-market opportunities rather than a battlefield of mega-deals. What was once seen as fragmentation now appears to be a hidden advantage: it fosters genuine local insight and creates possible synergies via consolidation. And as the cost of capital resets higher, many European private companies are entering this cycle with notably healthier balance sheets³.

At the macro level, Europe’s resilience also reflects, in our view, its industrial and policy foundations. While US has been driven by resilient consumer spending and a highly dynamic technology sector, Europe’s future growth is expected to centre on the productive core of its economy including manufacturing, healthcare, infrastructure and the energy transition. These sectors have returned to global focus as governments push for strategic autonomy, decarbonisation, and reindustrialisation, as recently illustrated by Germany’s new fiscal plan.

Private equity sits at the centre of this shift — and policymakers are increasingly aware of it. With public markets still volatile and bank lending cautious, private capital is becoming one of the key engines of Europe’s economic renewal.

Meanwhile, Europe’s private market ecosystem has reached a new level of sophistication. The secondary market is thriving, accounting circa 42% of secondaries capital raised on average over the last five years (2020-2025)⁴, supported by lower entry valuations, stable corporate governance frameworks, and a growing pipeline of high-quality assets. Dry powder remains plentiful, yet relative to GDP, Europe remains under-allocated, as only 2% of institutional capital is directed into Private Equity, compared with nearly 10% in the US⁵, leaving meaningful room for expansion without the speculative excesses observed elsewhere.

As the era of easy money ends, global investors are rediscovering the value of fundamentals. That is precisely where Europe excels. European private equity doesn’t need to reinvent its narrative; it simply needs to be recognised for what it is: a market built on fundamentals, ready for a world where capital once again carries a cost. In a decade likely to be defined by selectivity and discipline, European private equity is well positioned to lead.