Trade Sales Now Absorb 71% of Private Equity Exit Value
The IPO window is still mostly shut. Corporate strategics have become the exit of first resort for aging portfolio companies.
NEW YORK, August 31, 2026. Corporate strategics absorbed 71% of private equity exit value over the trailing six months. That's according to EY's Private Equity Pulse Q2 2026 report. That's up from a roughly two-thirds baseline. EY says the trend has held for about 18 months.
S&P Global Market Intelligence found the same shift by deal count. Trade sales outnumbered PE-backed IPOs by a wide margin in the first half of 2025. There were 1,191 trade sales, against a 31% drop in PE-backed IPO volume. Bain's Global Private Equity Report 2026 puts total exit value at $717 billion for 2025. That's up 47% year over year. It names corporate M&A as a major driver of that increase.
The IPO route hasn't reopened enough to absorb the backlog. Sponsor-to-sponsor deals are harder to price now too. Marks set during the 2020-21 vintage often don't match what today's financial buyers are willing to underwrite. Well-funded corporates doing transformational M&A have become the exit of first resort instead of the fallback.
Lone Star Funds' sale of SPX FLOW to ITT Inc. for $4.78 billion is a clean example of the pattern. The deal was announced in December 2025 and closed in the first quarter of 2026. A financial sponsor sold directly to a strategic buyer, rather than to another fund or the public market.
That's a structural shift in who gets to set the price. A strategic acquirer can underwrite synergies that a financial buyer can't match. That's the leverage sponsors need. Their own portfolio companies have been sitting past the typical hold period. The exit environment has not gotten easier. Sponsors are simply finding a different door.