Buyers including from the US, UK, European and domestic private equity houses invested into 175 Irish deals last year, up 5pc on the previous year. The deals represent a combined €8.2bn of investment.
The busiest sectors were business services, information technology and healthcare.
The total disclosed investment value was down slightly compared with 2024. However, the average value of deals where the price was disclosed rose sharply – up 27pc to €292m.
That is skewed by a handful of really big deals, including the €2.5bn acquisition of Energia Group by Ardian, but it is also consistent with a trend in the market prioritising scale, according to Gavin Sheehan, partner, deal advisory at KPMG in Ireland. He expects the trends to continue and accelerate into this year.
“While not possible to entirely discount the challenges presented by macro uncertainty, given the robust investment levels experienced in recent years and the positive investor sentiment entering 2026, we expect that PE sponsors will likely increase investment this year and favour opportunities where operational improvements, disciplined add-ons and cross-border execution can be combined to deliver resilient value creation.”
In a shift in the market, Mr Sheehan said Irish business owners are now actively seeking external investment from private equity as a driver of growth – reflecting a growing awareness of how domestic private equity-backed businesses have in some cases become platforms for rapid growth through access to capital and bolt-on acquisitions.
KPMG said there were 44 transactions completed or announced in the last quarter of the 2025. Of those, nine had disclosed valuations which added up to €3.2bn.
Globally, private equity investment rose from $1.8tn (€1.5tn) in 2024 to $2.1tn in 2025, despite a decline in deal volumes from 20,836 to 19,093.
The Americas, dominated by the US, accounted for more than half of all investment by value even with a reduced number of transactions.
The EMA region attracted $729.9bn of investment across 8,278 deals in 2025 – again with an increase in the amount of capital deployed versus the previous year even though the number of deals was down.
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