Welcome to the 2019 edition of McKinsey’s annual review of private investing. Our research on the industry’s dynamics and performance in 2018 turned up several critical insights, including these trends:
Private markets are going mainstream. Private equity’s net asset value has grown more than seven fold since 2002, twice as fast as global public equities. And consider the growth in US PE backed companies, which numbered about 4,000 in 2006. By 2017, that figure rose to about 8,000, a 106 percent increase. Meanwhile, US publicly traded firms fell by 16 percent from 5,100 to 4,300 (and by 46 percent since 1996). Even some large investors that had previously stayed away are now allocating to private markets, seeing them as necessary to get diversified exposure to global growth.