Top Private Equity Firms in 2024

While the private equity landscape has struggled to rebound from a multi-year lull, hampered by market volatility and unfriendly macroeconomic conditions, there are firms that have found fundraising success despite the challenging circumstances. 

Record high interest rates have impacted all aspects of dealmaking—financing, valuation, and exit function. Deal value dropped 60% from its peak in 2021, and deal number has fallen 35% over the same period. With direct lending becoming too costly, the PE space has increasingly turned to private credit as a viable alternative to traditional financing.

Below, we take a look at five private equity fund managers that top out their peers in fundraising and have secured investor allocations during these tricky cycles. We also share a snapshot of analyst and expert perspectives sourced from the AlphaSense platform, with in-depth insights on their competitive advantages and outlooks. 

Blackstone

Blackstone is an industry leader in the private equity space, having raised a record $124 billion for its private equity strategy over the last five years. According to findings from Private Equity International, challenging factors have created ‘denominator effects’ for LPs and GPs—in particular, market volatility created headwinds for investment timing, which resulted in lower distributions from prior funds. 

Blackstone has navigated these headwinds by relying on their investment discipline and leveraging long-standing LP relationships to deliver value and stability, and have found fundraising success in an otherwise complex and stale environment. 

Expert perspectives sourced from the AlphaSense platform provide insights into Blackstone’s prominence in the alternatives space, attributed to their portfolio diversity and retail presence: 

“If you go look at Blackstone, Blackstone has a very complete portfolio. They have done infrastructure, real estate, and private equity credit. They have been at the forefront of all these.

For example, if you look at how Blackstone has created a product for retail investors. I think all are going after private wealth, and not just private wealth of the ultra-high net worth individuals—but also high net worth individuals. Essentially, what I’m referring to is democratization of alternate investment as an asset class itself, where normal people with a certain net worth will be able to access the asset class and make it a part of their portfolio. That is, I think, going to create a big differential.”

– Former Principal, KKR | Expert Transcript

KKR

Other than Blackstone, KKR is the only private equity firm to exceed $100 billion in fundraising over the last five years. KKR consists of three business lines—a $550 billion asset management business, a $170 billion insurance business, and a more recent Strategic Holdings segment containing direct interest from their core private equity portfolio. KKR’s differentiated operating model enables each business to work synergistically and strategically together. 

Recently, the firm announced plans to raise $20 billion for a new North American buyout fund, targeting a net internal rate of return (IRR) between 20% and 25%. KKR’s last deployed North American private equity fund, which launched in 2017, reported an IRR net of fees of 20.5% as of the end of March.

Broker research recently sourced from the AlphaSense platform finds that KKR has successfully diversified its businesses away from private equity. In the US, KKR has multiple small to mid-sized businesses that are scaling quickly across infrastructure, real estate, credit, and insurance. This is expected to generate considerable free cash yield and value growth over the next three years.

Like Blackstone, KKR (NYSE: KKR) offers common stock as an option for retail investors to gain exposure to the asset class without the hefty fees.

EQT

Stockholm-based EQT manages over €230 billion in AUM across private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. Their five-year fundraising total came in just under $100 billion, as of June 2024. 

In March, EQT closed its Future Fund at €3 billion in total fund commitments. The EQT Future Fund invests in two themes: climate & nature and health & well-being. Their sustainability-driven approach enables the fund to hold companies for longer, leveraging EQT’s proven active ownership approach and tailored impact management and measurement toolbox to drive attractive downside protected returns.  

Broker research sourced from the AlphaSense platform indicates the firm is well-positioned to play an important role in shaping a more sustainable future, and has a thematic investment philosophy aligned with making a ‘positive contribution to society.’ EQT’s management seeks to actively ‘future proof’ all of its holdings, in turn boosting EQT’s fund performance, and making it an attractive option for investors with ESG requirements.

CVC Capital Partners

Less than a year after closing its CVC Capital Partners IX Fund at €26 billion—private equity’s largest-ever buyout fund—CVC activated the Europe / Americas Fund IX, Asia VI, and Strategic Opportunities III funds in May 2024. These earlier-than-anticipated activations were the result of increased deployment activity and high demand from new and returning institutional investors.

Analyst research sourced from the AlphaSense platform has a positive outlook on the CVC Capital Partners Fund IX. One analyst believes it demonstrates the power of CVC’s fundraising potential as the largest buyout fund ever raised globally.

Texas Pacific Group (TPG)

Based in Fort Worth, Texas, TPG manages investment funds in growth capital, venture capital, public equity, and debt investments across a range of industries including consumer/retail, media and telecommunications, industrials, technology, travel, leisure, and health care. TPG formally listed on NASDAQ in January 2022.

Notably, TPG’s impact platform manages $19 billion in AUM. In partnership with Bono and Jeff Skoll, TPG launched the Rise Fund in 2016. TPG was the first global alternative asset manager to develop an impact investing business with more than $1 billion in assets under management.

Recent broker research sourced from the AlphaSense platform identifies TPG’s high quality, capital-light business model as an attractive means to capitalize on secular growth in private markets. The broker also believes that TPG is well-positioned to penetrate private credit and infrastructure growth opportunities, thanks to the firm’s recent acquisition of Angelo Gordon and a unique impact investing platform.

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In a world where data is often scarce and difficult to source, validating your investment thesis with conviction is critical. AlphaSense empowers you to: 

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