To the casual observer, 2024 may have felt like yet another difficult year for private equity (PE) globally. Fundraising remained tough—down 24 percent year over year for traditional commingled vehicles, marking the third consecutive year of decline. Investment returns were muted, especially compared with buoyant public markets.
Our analysis reveals a more nuanced picture. After two years of murky conditions, private equity started to emerge from the fog in 2024.
For one, the long-awaited uptick in distributions finally arrived. For the first time since 2015, sponsors’ distributions to limited partners (LPs) exceeded capital contributions (and were the third highest on record).1 This increase in distributions arrived at an important time for LPs: In our
2025 proprietary survey2 of the world’s leading LPs, 2.5 times as many LPs ranked distributions to paid-in capital (DPI) as a “most critical” performance metric, compared with three years ago. There was also a rebound in dealmaking after two years of decline, with a notable increase in the value and number of large private equity deals (above $500 million in enterprise value). Exit activity, in terms of value, started to whir again as well, especially sponsor-to-sponsor exits.
