Executive Summary
Entries and Add-ons — PE-backed entries in France are on track to hit a new high this year, propelled by a surge in activity across the Services, Industrials and TMT sectors. Even after the recent surge in deal activity, France notably remains underweight TMT (-5%) compared to the rest of Europe.
Exits and Holding Periods — PE exits are up, driven by a particularly strong Sponsor-to-Sponsor exit market. But multiples are down (currently standing at 9.3x) and holding periods are up (from 5.6 to 6.1 years).
Top Investors in France — Ardian has emerged as the leading French HQ’d investor, managing a total estimated EV of €30.9bn across Europe, followed by PAI Partners (€21.6bn) and Astorg (€12bn). Other investors in the top 10 include Crédit Agricole, Bpifrance, Antin, Naxicap, Eurazeo, CDC and AXA.
PE Portfolio and Growth — Services is the largest PE sector in France, accounting for 27% of assets, followed by Industrials (23%) and Consumer (20%). By region, Paris is the de facto hub, accounting for 47% of French PE-backed assets and 44 of the 50 largest French investors.
We hope this report provides you with valuable insights and a comprehensive understanding of the French private equity ecosystem and its investment opportunities.
If you have any questions about the data or the report, do not hesitate to reach out to sid.jain@gain.pro.
Chapter 01: Entries
Overall PE Entries
PE-backed entries in France are on track to hit a new high this year. Investors are starting to deploy record levels of dry powder as overall market conditions improve. The strong deal momentum is driven by an uptick in activity in the Services, Industrials and TMT sectors.
Compared to the Rest of Europe, deal activity remains stronger in France. Deals are up 42% since 2018, outpacing the 14% rise seen across the Rest of Europe. Unlike other regions, France also did not see a deal boom in 2021 followed by a sharp decline. Activity was more balanced.
Quarterly PE entry activity in France remains robust. After a slow Q1, the pace of PE entries has picked up. Investor confidence is improving. Q4 saw one of largest PE deals in French history (CD&R acquiring 50% stake in Opella from Sanofi at €16bn EV).
As for deal activity by type, Sponsor-to-Sponsor deals are coming back. Their share is up from 32% in 2023 to 41% in 2024. For deals with EBITDA >€10m, their share was even higher (57%).
Sector Trends
By sector, PE entries in Industrials, Services and TMT held up better. Entries were up 23% in Industrials, 3% in Services and down just 6% in TMT. Overall, French PE entry count fared better compared to the Rest of Europe (down -1% vs. -29% for the Rest of Europe).
Over the longer term, the share of Industrials entries is declining, with TMT and Services gaining share. The share of Consumer entries has also seen an uptick – a trend in contrast to the Rest of Europe, driven by France's attractive fashion, retail and other well-performing consumer brand industries.
Even after the recent shift in deal activity, France notably remains underweight TMT (-5%). France also remains overweight in the Services (+3%) and Consumer (+2%) sectors compared to the Rest of Europe.
As for size, PE-backed entries in France are larger compared to the Rest of Europe. 51% of PE entries in France were of those with EBITDA >€10m (vs. 34% for the Rest of Europe). Entry size was smallest in TMT and largest in Energy & Materials.
Minority vs. Majority Deals
France is a big market for minority stakes with many co-investors in a single asset.51% of PE-backed entries in France were minority stakes (compared to just 20% in DACH, 28% in Benelux and 34% in UK).
Buy-and-Build
Add-on deal activity in France is slightly muted compared to previous years. Even after estimating for reporting delays and annualizing the data, we expect add-on activity levels to be down ~12% yoy.
France has a similar level of add-on activity compared to the Rest of Europe. On average, 52% of French PE assets carry out add-on acquisitions. By sector, Services, TMT and Industrials are the most active sectors for buy-and-build, accounting for 42%, 19% and 17% of deals, respectively.
Chapter 02: Exits
Overall PE Exits
French PE exit activity is on track to be up year-over-year. After two consecutive years of decline, we expect activity to pick up this year, driven by a particularly strong Sponsor-to-Sponsor exit market in France.
Quarterly exit volumes are hitting new highs after a slow Q1. Improving overall market conditions, greater availability of credit and fundraising dynamics are all contributing to the uptick.
Methodology
The data for this report comes from Gain.pro.
Entries & Exits
We define PE-backed entries as those in which a PE firm took a minority or majority stake. We define PE-backed exits as those in which a PE firm sold a minority or majority stake. We exclude any VC rounds from our analysis. Both entries and exits exclude live (pre-2023) and aborted deals.
Unless otherwise stated, we only focused our analysis on assets HQ’d in France.
We estimate the deal count based on prior deal history and the percentage of deals that are announced or added post-quarter close.
Financials
Unless stated otherwise, the financial metrics in the report are last reported. Where possible, we have used 2023 metrics. In cases where 2023 numbers are still being reported, we have relied on 2022 metrics.
For metric calculations, we only included assets that had a hand-curated profile on Gain.pro (12-14+ hours of primary research).
Rankings
We take a novel approach to our ranking, which is based on total managed enterprise value (EV) in Europe.
At Gain.pro, we track over 12,900 investor portfolios in detail. We calculate EV for each asset in the investors portfolio by multiplying the assets’ EBITDA by a predicted exit multiple, and sum it up. Where EBITDA numbers are not available, we estimate it based on assets revenue and investors’ other holdings.
We only consider majority buyout and minority-owned PE assets for our rankings. We exclude any VC investments and publicly listed stakes. We also adjust for ownership share.
We leverage the assets’ sector, size, growth rate, margin profile and cash generation to predict its exit multiple.
Further, we exclude any inactive investors from the largest global investors in France ranking with: i) <3 portfolio companies in France; ii) <2 entries in France since 2018 and iii) <2 positive portfolio EBITDA values.
For the largest French investors rankings, we exclude investors with: i) <5 portfolio companies in Europe; ii) <5 entries since 2018 in Europe and iii) <3 positive portfolio EBITDA values.
