MW This Blackstone-TPG deal joins over $700 billion worth of private-equity buyouts this year. That's good news for shareholders.
By Steve Gelsi
Private-equity sponsors are stepping up their dealmaking with larger buyouts that have boosted stock prices and advisory fees
The bullish environment for mergers is drawing in some larger deals by private-equity firms, including Tuesday's take-private of Hologic.
The $18.3 billion acquisition of Hologic Inc. announced Tuesday is the latest in a run of larger deals by private-equity firms that have fueled stock gains and provided billions of dollars in fees to investment banks.
U.S. private-equity firms have announced $737.94 billion in deals in 2025 as of Tuesday - up 26.4% from the year-ago level of $584 million and the largest figure since 2021, when $957 billion in deals were announced as of the same date, according to LSEG data.
Interest in artificial intelligence and the infrastructure to support it has been one of the bigger deal drivers, along with the recent decline in interest rates, which makes it less expensive to use debt for deals.
The rise in private-equity dealmaking helped push up U.S. investment-banking fees by 9%, to $47.8 billion, in the nine months ended Sept. 30, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. $(JPM)$ in the No. 1 slot, according to data from LSEG.
The $47.8 billion figure ranks as the second-highest reading on record for the first nine months of the year since 2000, LSEG said.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. $(GS)$ Chief Executive David Solomon said on the company's third-quarter earnings call with analysts that sponsor activity is up about 40% from the firm's perspective, as the bank topped Wall Street expectations despite lower-than-forecast results in its equities business.
"We see more of that in the pipeline," Solomon said, "and so I think you're going to see an acceleration there. It's quite constructive."
Peter Martenson, managing partner at private-market capital firm Aviara Partners, said the string of larger deals this year reflects a doubling down by private-equity sponsors on sectors with long-term potential growth, with an eye on growing scale.
"As uncertainty around tariffs and inflation lingers, firms are also favoring domestic-focused assets to mitigate global supply-chain risks," Martenson said in an email to MarketWatch.
Kelly DePonte, an adviser to pension funds and other private-equity fund investors, said firms have built up billions of dollars in unspent capital - known as dry powder - amid a lack of activity in recent years, as rising interest rates capped off the deal boom of 2021.
Now that economic conditions have improved compared to one or two years ago, sponsors are eager to put capital to work, he noted.
"As sellers' expectations became more rational and M&A activity increased, buyout players jumped back into the market," DePonte said.
Ted Swimmer, head of commercial banking for Citizens Financial Group Inc. (CFG), said the bank has been doing more advisory and capital-raising work with private-equity firms, on middle-market deals as well as larger transactions.
The bull market has helped push up stock prices and private-market valuations to more attractive buyout-price levels, from the middle market up to the megadeal level, he said.
"Some of these deals have been on the back burner for a while because the seller had to be willing to sell, but stock prices were depressed," Swimmer told MarketWatch. "Another factor is that financing markets are accommodative right now."
He said he remains cautious about potential frothiness in debt markets due to strong demand for capital and a more limited supply of loans - but, for now, the pipeline for dealmaking across the board continues to look full, according to Swimmer.
Such an increase in dealmaking often pushes up stock prices for investors, as Wall Street speculates on more premium-priced deals.
Shares of Hologic $(HOLX)$ moved up by 2.9% to $73.98 a share Tuesday, closer to the buyout price of $76 a share announced by private-equity firms Blackstone Inc. (BX) and TPG Inc. $(TPG)$
Hologic's stock has risen more than $20 a share, or about 37%, since reports surfaced in May that it had rejected a $16 billion buyout offer from TPG.
For Blackstone, the deal marks its second $10 billion-plus deal in recent months, after it agreed to buy TXNM Energy Inc. (TXNM) for $11.5 billion, or $61.25 a share, including debt. TXNM's stock price rose 7% on the day the deal was announced on May 19.
As big as those deals are, they're not even on the list of 2025's largest private-equity deals.
The priciest buyout of 2025 so far is the $49 billion take-private of Electronic Arts Inc. $(EA)$ by a group of investors including private-equity firm Silver Lake as well as Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners, according to LSEG data.
That's followed by the $40 billion buyout of Aligned Data Centers by BlackRock Inc.'s $(BLK)$ private-equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners, along with Abu Dhabi's MGX and the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership. The seller is Macquarie Group Ltd.
The $30 billion acquisition of a minority stake in OpenAI on October was led by SoftBank Group Corp. (JP:9984) $(SFTBY)$ and included Microsoft Corp. $(MSFT)$ as well as private-equity firms Altimeter Capital Management, Coatue Management and Thrive Capital.
And private-equity firm Sycamore Partners led the $20.7 billion deal to buy Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., which closed in August after an initial announcement in March.
Other large deals by private-equity sponsors in recent months include Thoma Bravo's August take-private of human-capital software company Dayforce Inc. (DAY) for $12.3 billion, which the firm described as the "largest standalone enterprise-software deal ever led by a financial sponsor." When word of the deal had been reported three days earlier, Dayforce's stock rose 26%
And in September, Apollo Global Management Inc. $(APO)$ joined Sumitomo Corp. (JP:8053) $(SSUMY)$, SMBC Aviation Capital and Brookfield Corp. (BN) in the $28 billion buyout of Air Lease Corp. $(AL)$ Air Lease Corp.'s stock rose about 7% the day the deal was made public.
All told, Goldman Sachs leads the 2025 standings in global mergers-and-acquisitions activity with $1.05 trillion in deals as of Oct. 16, up sharply from $688.4 billion in the year-ago period, according to LSEG.
Morgan Stanley $(MS)$ is second in global M&A activity with $817.8 billion, up from $562.6 billion in the year-ago quarter, and is followed by JPMorgan Chase with $784.1 billion, up from $508.6 billion in the year-ago quarter.
JPMorgan leads the rankings for global investment-banking fees with about $8.15 billion year to date as of Oct. 16, up from $7.52 billion in the year-ago period.
Goldman Sachs ranks No. 2 with $6.75 billion in investment-banking fees, up from $5.9 billion in the year-ago period, and is folllowed by Morgan Stanley (MS) with $5.42 billion, up from $4.6 billion in the year-ago period.
Despite rising dollar volumes, the actual number of private-equity M&A deals in 2025 has fallen by 17% to 7,590 as of Tuesday, compared to 9,159 in the year-ago period.
-Steve Gelsi
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 21, 2025 17:51 ET (21:51 GMT)
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