28. Transaction Value 2025: what the new Invest Europe report really shows

The Transaction Value: Private Capital Analysis report published by Invest Europe in July 2026 covers ten years of European transactions (2016-2025) — more than 435,000 deals recorded by the European Data Cooperative, the most comprehensive database on the market. Unlike traditional investment statistics, transaction value captures the totality of capital allocated to a company: the amount invested by the fund, co-investments and bank leverage. It is therefore the most faithful measure of private equity’s real weight in the European economy. A critical reading.

2025: a year of consolidation at a high level

Total transaction value reached €260.9 billion across 8,681 deals in 2025, stable versus 2024 (€261.2 billion) and 3% above the five-year average. It is the fourth year out of five above the €250 billion threshold. Over five years, more than €1,300 billion has been deployed through private capital transactions in Europe — 45% more than over the previous five years.

Set that figure against the prevailing narrative of an industry “stalled” by the market environment: through one of the most volatile periods in investor memory, private equity maintained a historically elevated pace of deployment. The 2025 breakdown confirms the market’s structure: buyout 72% of value (€189.0 billion), venture 14% (€35.3 billion), growth 13% (€33.4 billion).

Buyout: stability — and record equity cushions

Buyout came in at €189.0 billion (−4%), in line with the levels observed since 2021, excluding the temporary trough of 2023 (€126 billion). Mega-deals (above €1 billion) account for 49% of the total at €92.2 billion, and the year’s decline is entirely explained by large transactions between €500 million and €1 billion (−33%). The mid-market, by contrast, is holding up remarkably well: the core mid-market even progressed to €23.6 billion.

Perhaps the single most important number in the report is this one: the average equity ratio remains above 60%, as it has every year since 2018. To commentators who still describe the LBO as a debt-fuelled machine inherited from the 1980s, the data answers that equity is now the structural majority of acquisition financing. One point for the “setting the record straight” series.

Venture: the second-best year in history

Venture capital continued its progression to €35.3 billion (+11%) — the second-highest level on record behind 2021 (€39.8 billion), and more than four times the 2016 level. The momentum comes from larger rounds: transactions above €15 million grew 15% and concentrate 67% of value, while small tickets declined in both value and volume. ICT represents 49% of venture value (+25%), biotech-healthcare 27% (+10%). A sign of maturation: venture’s average equity ratio continues its slow decline to 66%, as growth debt and hybrid instruments become fixtures of European financing rounds.

Growth: a rebound — but a rich man’s rebound

After three consecutive years of decline, growth capital recovered to €33.4 billion (+12%). Beware the quick read: the recovery is entirely driven by large deals. Transactions above €30 million rose 21% and account for 77% of the total, while every smaller size category declined. The number of growth deals actually keeps falling (829 transactions, versus more than 1,100 in 2023). Growth financing for mid-sized companies has not recovered.

The great sector rotation: tech and healthcare absorb the capital

The decade-long movement is spectacular. Transaction value in ICT has multiplied by more than 3.5 since 2016 to reach €79.2 billion, close to the 2022 peak, and ICT became in 2025 the leading buyout sector (€50.0 billion). Biotech-healthcare follows the same ×3.5 trajectory and set an all-time record at €51.9 billion (+43%) — 20% of total value, with historic highs in both venture and buyout. Conversely, consumer goods and services — once the leading sector of European private equity — fell to €28.1 billion (−44%), their lowest level in ten years.

Co-investment: LP-GP alignment becomes the norm

LPs participated in transactions representing 60% of total value in 2025, up from 44% in 2016. The number of deals with co-investment grew 73% over the period, to 4,629 — a clear majority of transactions. In venture, the proportion even reaches 92% of value. Co-investment is no longer a sophistication reserved for large pension funds: it is the standard operating mode of the European market, and a powerful driver of cost compression for end investors.

The United Kingdom vs France battle: the full match

Now to the duel that structures the European market. The usual methodological caveat: Invest Europe aggregates France & Benelux on one side, UK & Ireland on the other. The match is not strictly bilateral, but each country accounts for the bulk of its region and the methodology is consistent.

First battleground: transaction value

Let us start with the only rigorous exercise: comparing the same metric, from the same report, on the same statistical basis. Transaction value in this report is aggregated as market statistics — by location of the portfolio company — and therefore measures the capital invested in each region’s companies, whatever the fund’s country. Over the last five years:

On this battleground, France & Benelux leads UK & Ireland three years out of five, including 2025. Over the full decade, all strategies combined, the region finishes ahead six years out of ten, with a cumulative total of roughly €627 billion versus €575 billion. The 2025 detail by segment:

Three battles, three verdicts. On buyout, France takes a clear European lead in 2025 and dominates the decade cumulatively (about €454 billion versus €408 billion). On venture, British dominance is indisputable and growing: 31% of European value, its second-best year in history, while French venture declined. On growth, the perfect tie of 2025 masks opposite dynamics — France is surrendering a historical leadership (a cumulative €114 billion versus €80 billion over the decade) after four years of decline, while the UK rebounds by 30%.

Second battleground: fundraising

The second battleground is just as comparable in itself — but distinct from the first and not superimposable: fundraising, from Invest Europe’s activity report (Investing in Europe: Private Equity Activity 2025). The nature of the data changes: these are industry statistics, aggregated by location of the management team, no longer by location of the investee company. The figures, in billions of euros:

Here the verdict is unambiguous and without exception: the United Kingdom dominates each of the five years, with €69.0 billion raised in 2025 versus €38.7 billion, and a peak of €99.5 billion in 2022, while French fundraising shows remarkable stability around €38 billion. London remains, beyond dispute, Europe’s management platform — home to the large pan-European teams that attract global institutional capital.

The cross-reading: London raises, Paris deploys

Can the two battlegrounds be brought together? Yes — provided we state explicitly what we are doing. What follows is no longer a comparison of homogeneous figures: it is the juxtaposition of two metrics of a different nature — capital raised by teams domiciled in a region, and capital invested in that region’s companies. The juxtaposition is illuminating precisely because the two hierarchies diverge:

The contrast leaps off the page: a constant dominator on fundraising, the UK is regularly overtaken on capital invested in its companies. London raises, Paris deploys. The natural inference — that a significant share of the capital raised across the Channel finances continental companies — is plausible as an order of magnitude, but let us be honest about its limits: published data does not allow fund-by-fund tracing of flows, and London teams also invest outside Europe. What the juxtaposition establishes with certainty is a distinction that media rankings systematically flatten: the geography of management and the geography of investment are two different things — and for the real economy, it is the second that counts.

On the two properly measured battlegrounds, the narrative of London as the undisputed centre of gravity of European private equity therefore deserves serious qualification: incontestable for management and venture, it is wrong for capital deployment and buyout.

Conclusion: a mature, selective industry — more balanced than the story goes

The Transaction Value 2025 report sketches an industry that has changed in nature. Volumes hold at historically high levels despite a turbulent environment; equity structurally dominates deal financing; capital is migrating massively towards technology and healthcare; LPs now co-invest in the majority of transactions. And the Franco-British competition, far from the one-sided duel so often described, plays out on distinct battlegrounds where each side has built a genuine advantage.

The real question goes beyond the Channel: in a market where ICT and healthcare concentrate half the capital deployed, the challenge for Europe is no longer whether Paris beats London, but whether the European ecosystem as a whole — fundraising, deployment, exits — can stand comparison with the United States. The €1,300 billion mobilised in five years is a foundation. It is not yet an answer.

Gilles Mougenot
Senior Advisor at Argos Fund

Sources: Invest Europe, Transaction Value: Private Capital Analysis, Statistics on European investments 2016-2025, July 2026, and Invest Europe, PE Activity 2025 (fundraising), European Data Cooperative (EDC) data. Transaction value is defined as the sum of the amount invested by the fund, amounts invested by co-investors and leverage provided by banks or other sources, where applicable. Market statistics: aggregation by location of the portfolio company. The equity ratio includes equity, quasi-equity, mezzanine and debt provided by the fund.