Public to private trend stays active In both Europe and the United States, the number of take-private transactions by private equity 昀椀rms in- creased materially in both 2021 and 2022, fuelled by gigantic fundraises by megacap PE 昀椀rms and the avail- ability of cheap debt 昀椀nancing. In 2022 alone, 9 public tech companies from Europe and 18 from the US were taken private by PE sponsors, equating to a record aggregate transaction value of $134B However, a rapid hiking of interest rates and an increasingly challenging fundraising environment have since moderated buyer appetite and slowed (but certainly not diminished) the pace of PE take-privates of public tech companies. In 2023 to date, 6 companies with a total value of $5B in Europe and 8 companies totalling $32B of value in the US have been taken private by PE 昀椀rms. The most sizeable of these are the take-privates of Qualtrics Interna- tional ($11B, led by Silver Lake) in the US and Software AG ($3B, Silver Lake) in Europe. Announced and completed take-privates in Europe and US, by transaction value ($B) and count, 2019 to 2023 Transaction value ($B) # of transactions 20 10 16 8 ) B # $ ( 12 6 o e f u l t a r v a n n s o a i c t t c i a o s n n 8 4 s a r T 4 2 0 0 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023YTD Notes: Data is as of 30 September Sources: 2023. Excludes the follow- ing: biotech, secondary transactions, debt, lending capital, and grants. 231 | Outcomes