Best of LinkedIn: Private Equity: Exit Strategies CW 38/ 39

Private equity exits are being rebuilt around longer holds, higher financing costs and a narrower set of buyers. Sponsors are responding on three fronts: earlier exit preparation, operating performance as the main source of return, and new routes to liquidity beyond a sale or IPO. Large strategic and sponsor transactions are still clearing, but selectively, and mostly where earnings quality and a credible buyer story are already in place.

Date

October 2, 2026

Private Equity: Exit Strategies

Thomas Allgeyer

Methodology: Every two weeks we collect most relevant posts on LinkedIn for selected topics and create an overall summary only based on these posts. If you´re interested in the single posts behind, you can find them here: https://linktr.ee/thomasallgeyer. Have a great read!

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Exit readiness

Exit readiness shifts from a pre sale project to continuous reconciliation of share registers, loan notes and leavers
Buyers price data speed, with a next day answer signaling a business run on its numbers
An unknown cash buffer cut a Swiss biopharma's exit multiple from 8x to 5x, a CHF 35 million loss
Forensic reviews of procurement, operations and indirect spend one to two years before a sale target higher EBITDA
Founder dependency is the largest drag on the multiple, costing three to four turns of EBITDA
EY's 2026 study found nearly 60% of management teams saw major improvement from exit preparation
Riveron identifies six trends from nearly 30 middle market sponsor conversations on value creation and exit readiness

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Hold periods and liquidity

16,000 companies, 52% of buyout inventory, are held over four years, with a record 6.6 year average hold
Clearing the backlog of 33,575 unsold companies would take eleven years at the current pace
A record $349 billion is stranded in zombie funds past their 10 year life, per PitchBook
About 5,000 acquisitions worth $860 billion are stuck, with older fund stakes discounting 35% to 45% to NAV
Cash returned to investors is at its lowest since the financial crisis, with $3.5 trillion in unsold companies
Bain's 2026 report puts the average hold at exit near seven years, against five to six from 2010 to 2021
DPI is replacing IRR as the metric investors prioritize

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Rates and valuation resets

The Fed's September hike to 3.75% to 4.00% raises carrying costs on floating rate LBO debt
GPs hold almost $900 billion of buyout NAV in funds older than seven years, with no rate cut rescue ahead
Dividend recap volume through July fell about 50% to $19.62 billion from $39.6 billion
Vintage funds bought at 10x to 11x face an exit market at 7x to 8x
After the financial crisis, default rates fell from 11% in 2010 to under 1% by 2011
The bearish projection is that hundreds of billions from savings, pensions and family offices is lost within one to four years

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Value creation as the remaining lever

Value creation is the one sponsor function still adding seats, with several making first senior operations hires
Higher rates remove cheaper financing and multiple expansion, shifting returns to operating performance
The PortCo CFO mandate moves from cost cutting to pricing, working capital and unit economics
AI impact diligence now shapes entry pricing, while adoption inside existing portfolio companies is favored over AI native targets
Provex Advisory launched to guide PE backed SaaS companies on agentic AI after the SaaSpocalypse erased roughly $1 trillion
Stretched holds strain executive equity and force a reset of compensation and deal terms
Ownership Works has partnered with over 45 PE firms, with shared ownership programs at over 190 businesses

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Alternative routes to liquidity

Continuation vehicles hold $46.7 billion in funds five or more years old, drawing critique as sales to oneself
Professional services roll ups now sell to larger sponsors, including Citrin Cooperman to Blackstone and Schellman to Goldman Sachs Alternatives
Sequence Holdings and Michael Dell's family office paid $7.7 billion to take Baldwin Group private with permanent capital
Koniag Capital offers performance tied capital without fund exit timelines
Bending Spoons made 16 acquisitions worth roughly $10 billion since 2024 and holds them indefinitely
Independent buyouts counter the typical PE structure of 55% to 75% upfront, with only 21% of earnouts paid on average
Systech's 66 year old co-founders plan to keep running the firm until 80 instead of exiting
Penta Consulting completed a £75 million management buyout, keeping founder succession internal

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Capital supply and buyer behavior

Dry powder above $1 trillion and a six year deployment clock give quality business owners leverage
Deal value in the $25 million to $100 million segment rose over 70% quarter over quarter in Q2
73% of owners aged 55 or older plan to sell or transfer, while 27% plan to close or have no plan
57% of Indian family offices allocate under 10% to PE and VC, though their number grew from 45 to close to 300
Notre Dame holds 49.3% in private equity, with Michigan, Princeton and Harvard each above 40% in private markets
New UK independent sponsors are building LP credibility through landmark first deals
Founder exit planning starts with a target number and a date

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Transactions and sector exits

Aon is closing in on KKR owned USI for roughly $17 billion, while WTW chose the technology native Newfront
HUB International has filed confidentially for an IPO at roughly $29 billion, with Acrisure at $32 billion watching
Apollo is in talks to buy DePuy Synthes for roughly $20 billion, about 2.2x 2025 revenue
EverBank's $3.9 billion reverse merger with WaFd gives Warburg Pincus, Sixth Street and Stone Point a liquidity event
Graza hired Lazard to seek up to $600 million, roughly 20x its $30 million of EBITDA
Providence Capital announced the acquisition of Hometrack after six years of private equity ownership
Flint Group, ARS and USA Hometown Experts lead a wave of residential multi trade platform exits into 2027

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IPO markets and regional signals

Connor Group grades the 2026 IPO market B minus, with 232 IPOs priced and about $99 billion raised excluding SpaceX
HUB's IPO outlook stresses earnings readiness, narrow windows and underestimated D&O insurance costs
Asia PE and VC exits reached USD 89.1 billion in 2026, but exit count fell to 409 from 686
Italy recorded 229 tech deals in 2025, up 24%, while traditional private equity slows
Anmol Industries' ₹1,800 crore IPO sends all proceeds to the promoter trust, as 63% of Indian IPO proceeds did in 2025

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Industry forums

The IPEM Paris panel opened with record hold periods and put secondaries at the center of the debate
The Benelux panel weighed leadership, succession and timing trade offs in reopening the exit window
The Kernel Forum message was to stay exit ready, not exit reactive, to protect optionality
Cooper Parry's PE Exits Breakfast shared lessons on preparing businesses for sale
The Amateras Sunflower Summit framed private equity's constraint as patience, not capital
The Opus Connect roundtable named capital oversupply and thin talent benches as the pressure points

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Thanks to Justin McGorman, Mark Jansen, Katherine Gensheimer Friedman, Stephen Rayment, Jordan Nelson, Dr. Jürgen Schneider, Madeeha Raja, Michael Chasen, Amanda Kennedy, Josh Smigel, Chris Barber, Alexis Sikorsky, Mark Cushing, Ashim Talukder, Tim Wise, Abbas Hashmi, Paul Press, Mark Goldberg, Shannon Talbot, Montserrat Formoso, Adam Coffey, Joe Briggs, Andy Eversbusch, Will Schryver, Mustafa Siddiqui, Barry Toren, Ryan Pischke, Shikha Khetrapal, Allen Debes, Swapnil Jambhulkar, Cyril Grislain, Ignacio Gallardo Yñiguez, Bhavna Dewan, Johnny Lim, Carlotta Bernardi, Kyle Siegfried, Chris Jantz, Pradyumnā Nag, Benno Duenkelsbuehler, Chris Maxwell, Isaac T., Luke Flemmer, Carsten W., Lou Sokolovskiy, Jodie Broadley, Alice Mann, Eva Garcia de la Fuente and Torge Barkholtz, and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn:

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