A large share of the world's private-market dealmaking still takes place in the United States. That opportunity set is not a niche beside the public equity market. It is a parallel capital market, with its own access rules, its own holding periods and its own limits on liquidity.
Where the dealmaking sits
Bain & Company's Global Private Equity Reports give a clear sense of scale and of location. In 2024, global buyout investment value rose 37% to US$602 billion, across about 3,000 deals; global exit value rose 34% to US$468 billion; and North American deal value rose 34% [1]. In 2025, buyout deal value rose further, to US$904 billion, up 44%, while the number of deals fell 6% to 3,018, and average disclosed deal size reached a record US$1.2 billion. Thirteen transactions of US$10 billion or more accounted for US$274 billion of that gain, and 11 of the 13 were in the United States. North America accounted for 80% of the global growth in deal value. Exit value in 2025 was US$717 billion, up 47% [2].
These are industry activity figures, not investment returns, and they are not a forecast. They describe a market whose centre of gravity, on this evidence, remains in the United States.
A market that is not an exchange
Almost none of this activity is available by buying a listed share. Private-equity funds, co-investments and private-company interests are offered only privately, typically to investors who meet legal eligibility tests, and they are exchanged, when they are exchanged at all, by negotiation rather than on a public venue. The companion article Companies Are Staying Private Longer sets out how the public listing clock itself has moved. Taken together, the two points are simple: the U.S. private markets are large, and they sit off the exchange.
Depth is not the same as easy entry, or easy exit
Scale does not mean that capital can be placed or returned at will. Bain reports buyout dry powder of US$1.2 trillion at the end of 2024, with 24% of it held for four years or longer, and an unrealised stock of 29,000 unsold companies representing US$3.6 trillion [1]. By 2025, dry powder was US$1.3 trillion, the unrealised stock was about 32,000 companies and US$3.8 trillion, and the average holding period at exit was around seven years, against five to six years from 2010 to 2021. Distributions as a percentage of net asset value were 14%, and had been below 15% for four consecutive years. Buyout fundraising in 2025 was US$395 billion, down 16% [2].
McKinsey's Global Private Markets Report 2025, on its open summary page, places fundraising across private-market asset classes at its lowest level since 2016, records a 24% decline in private-equity commingled fundraising, and describes the exit backlog as larger, in value, count and share of portfolios, than at any point in the past two decades [3]. Illiquidity, delayed distributions and the risk of loss of capital are features of this market, not exceptions to it.
Why location and judgment travel together
A market this large, this concentrated in the United States, and this dependent on negotiated access is not one that a cross-border investor can usefully treat as a ticker symbol. It calls for a way to read U.S. managers and companies in their own context, and a way to place that reading inside the investor's own legal, tax and currency reality. That is work for a specialist partner with an owner's lens, fluency across borders, and a deep reading of U.S. private markets.
Key takeaways
- On Bain's figures, the United States remains the centre of gravity for global buyout dealmaking, including nearly all of the largest 2025 transactions.
- This is a private market: interests are offered privately, to eligible investors, and are not bought the way a listed share is bought.
- Depth is not easy entry or easy exit. Dry powder, unsold companies, longer holding periods and lower distributions relative to asset value are part of the same picture. Interests are typically illiquid, and capital can be lost.
- Reading this market from outside the United States is a matter of local transaction judgment and of cross-border process — the work of a specialist who is at home in both.
Sources
This article is for general education only and is not investment, legal or tax advice. It does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security or investment product. Any investment opportunity, if and when available, will be offered only privately, to eligible investors, by means of offering documents provided directly to them. Facts are attributed to cited sources; opinions are those of OPPORTUNITAS; hypothetical examples are illustrative only and do not represent any actual transaction or result. OPPORTUNITAS does not currently offer funds, allocations, co-investments or secondary interests through this website.