The buyout industry is wrestling with its toughest environment since the 2007-09 financial crisis, the boss of Britain’s biggest listed private equity firm has warned.
Simon Borrows, chief executive of 3i Group, said that the wider private equity sector was plagued by “quite a lot of issues at the moment”, including a sharp fall in dealmaking that has frustrated buyout firms’ attempts to offload companies they own and pay back their investors.
He cautioned that rival firms that had agreed acquisitions at lofty valuations during the last deal boom in 2021 and early 2022 would face challenges.
“There is a very big bifurcation between winners and losers,” Borrows said. “Once the marks and the performance of those things they bought at the top of the