The king of exits this year has emerged, achieving 100 billion in just half a year.

If you ask what the common belief in the primary market is, then the answer will most likely be just one: "Exit is king."

Regardless of their seniority or fame, for investors, "how to exit" represents professional ability, "how much to exit" represents performance level, and "to whom to exit" represents the resource network. If "exit is impossible", the market will seriously consider the necessity of this profession - the process of Masayoshi Son's operation of Arm's listing in 2023 perfectly illustrates all this:

Before Arm's listing, the entire SoftBank Vision Fund was in an absolute "huge loss" state. After excluding common assets, the cumulative investment losses of the three funds, SoftBank Vision Fund I, SoftBank Vision Fund II, and SoftBank Latin America Fund, reached $6.3 billion. Masayoshi Son has more than once said bluntly that "when SoftBank invited partners, it found itself unpopular." Therefore, after successfully promoting Arm to list on the Nasdaq, SoftBank targeted an opening market value of $64 billion and acquired the 25% stake in Arm held by SoftBank Vision Fund I, thus providing sufficient economic returns for the LPs of SoftBank Vision Fund I (such as the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala).

There are both classic examples and the latest ones. In August 2021, fintech company Chime completed its Series G financing at a valuation of $25 billion (approximately RMB 179.5 billion). The investors included well - known investment institutions such as Sequoia, SoftBank, Tiger Global, DST, Cathay Capital, and Access Industries. People firmly believed in the potential of "inclusive finance" behind Chime. However, with the start of the US dollar interest - rate hike cycle, the IPO market quietly tightened, and Chime had no room for further action in the capital market. When Chime finally went public as desired on June 12, 2025, its target valuation had dropped to $11.6 billion, a shrinkage of nearly RMB 100 billion.

So in the view of many practitioners, the "exit situation" is the key indicator to measure the industry cycle. When "exit is difficult", the industry faces difficulties and there are many tricky operations. When "exit is smooth", the industry thrives and amazing operations will emerge. And the case we are going to share today is a "mysterious operation" that has emerged recently: The latest report released by European private equity giant EQT shows that they completed exits worth up to $15.1 billion (approximately RMB 108.2 billion) in the first half of 2025. Not only did it double compared to the same period last year, but it also exceeded the total exit amount of last year in one go.

Mergers and acquisitions, do it even when facing difficulties

How did EQT complete total exits worth $15.1 billion in half a year? The answer is actually very simple and intuitive, mergers and acquisitions.

In the first six months of 2025, EQT completed multiple M&A transactions with valuations of over $1 billion. The three transactions with the highest valuations were Nord Anglia Education (valued at $14.3 billion), consumer healthcare company Karo Healthcare (valued at $3 billion), and cloud ERP provider Acumatica (valued at $2 billion). Just the exit from Nord Anglia Education alone helped EQT cash out $5.4 billion. In a horizontal comparison, according to the report, the exits completed by EQT through IPOs during the same period accounted for only one - fifth of the total exit amount.

However, if you dig deeper, you will find that these "mergers and acquisitions" are generally beyond the norm.

First, in the transaction of Nord Anglia Education, EQT's connection with Nord Anglia Education can be traced back to May 2017. At that time, Nord Anglia Education was still a listed company on the New York Stock Exchange. A consortium composed of Baring Private Equity Asia and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board completed the privatization of Nord Anglia Education at a price of $4.3 billion. After the transaction, Baring Private Equity Asia became the controlling shareholder with a 67% stake.

In March 2022, EQT completed a world - renowned M&A case in the PE industry. They acquired Baring Private Equity Asia at a price of €6.8 billion (approximately $8 billion). Nord Anglia Education also became an asset in EQT's hands after this transaction. With the support of its new owner EQT, Nord Anglia Education started an industrial integration model and completed multiple acquisition transactions between 2022 and 2024. For example, it acquired sports education brand IMG for $1.25 billion in 2023.

Normally, for an asset that is constantly increasing in value and expanding its industrial territory, the best exit path is to go public again and be re - priced in the public market. However, the situation of the IPO market after 2022 was really hard to describe. EQT's senior management publicly complained more than once that "the function of the IPO market has malfunctioned". The number of active buyers they could reach was limited, and the only active buyers were hedge funds and quantitative funds. These people "only hold stocks in the short term" and are of little help to market - value management.

Therefore, in the second half of 2023, EQT prepared a brand - new plan: They would promote "private stock sales" of the invested companies to increase the liquidity of funds for the LPs. At the specific implementation level, these stock sales would be carried out in the form of an "auction". The participants were limited to EQT's 1,100 LPs. EQT would entrust an investment bank as the underwriter, which would on the one hand list the lists of interested buyers and sellers, and on the other hand be responsible for leading the two parties in valuation negotiations.

In short, this is an "internal version of a group - funded IPO". In February 2024, the media reported that EQT had launched this plan, and at least five invested companies started planning for EQT's "internal IPO", and Nord Anglia Education was on this list.

So EQT's successful exit from Nord Anglia Education this year is actually the "fulfillment" of the above - mentioned plan: EQT was the seller in this acquisition - they were the absolute controlling shareholder of Nord Anglia Education; EQT was the referee - this acquisition was handled by EQT; EQT was the buyer - the buyer in this acquisition was a consortium led by EQT, and other investors included the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Neuberger Berman, and Dubai Holding Investments.

EQT also used the same model in another transaction during this period: They sold the old shares of SaaS company IFS worth €3 billion at a valuation of €15 billion. The buyers were their LP, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).

The case of Karo Healthcare is another extreme. EQT became the controlling shareholder of Karo Healthcare in 2019. After that, Karo Healthcare followed the path of Nord Anglia Education step by step. With the support of a large PE firm, it started industrial integration. For example, in 2021, it spent £200 million to acquire moisturizer brand E45 from British consumer goods group Reckitt. The growing Karo once announced that it planned to delist from the Nasdaq Stockholm Exchange in the first half of 2022 and re - list on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market.

Then there was nothing more. Once the idea of delisting came up, one could immediately feel the harshness of the market. For many years after 2022, there was no suitable window period for listing. The capital - market path of Karo has therefore been stuck at the point where EQT completed its privatization at a price of €1.4 billion (approximately $1.64 billion) in 2022. People could only pin their hopes on the M&A market - after all, consumer healthcare has always been one of the most active sectors in M&A transactions.

However, with Trump's administration, the uncertainty of the interest - rate cut speed and the volatility of the debt market directly hit the confidence of M&A investors. According to data from the London Stock Exchange, in the three months ending June 30, 2025, the number of publicly completed transactions in the US market was about 10,900, the lowest quarterly level since the beginning of 2015 (excluding the second quarter of 2022 affected by the pandemic).

So although EQT successfully cashed out €2.6 billion (approximately $3 billion) from Karo and made a profit, did the price satisfy everyone? That's another matter. At least KKR thought it was really difficult. Their Managing Director Hans Arstad said in a statement: "We completed this transaction in a state of doing our utmost during the market turmoil."

Has the exit outlook improved?

In addition to completing M&A transactions in various ways, EQT also did a major thing in the past half - year: a leadership change.

In February 2025, EQT officially announced that Christian Sinding, who had been the CEO of the company for more than six years, was about to step down. He would be replaced by Per Franzen, the deputy executive partner of EQT in charge of private equity investment business in Europe and North America. Private equity investment in Europe and North America is currently EQT's largest business segment. Per Franzen took over in 2019, and as of now, the asset management scale has doubled to €113 billion.

This is a very delicate time point because at the investor conference call held in January 2025, EQT had just announced the launch of a new fundraising cycle with a target of €100 billion (approximately $104 billion). EQT would actively expand the diversity of investment strategies and distribution channels to achieve this goal. In the official statement, Per Franzen also appropriately expressed his determination for reform. He said: "There is an internal saying at EQT that everything can be improved at any time... Regularly replacing the decision - making layer to introduce new perspectives is part of EQT's corporate culture. I'm really looking forward to taking it to the next level."

So when carefully reviewing the path of EQT's success as the "king of exits", it is inevitably discouraging, filled with a sense of exclusivity among big players, a sense of impermanence in the world, and a suffocating feeling of market games. It can be said that its success actually proves one thing: The difficulty for the primary market to create returns has reached an unprecedented level, and the existing tools are simply unable to cope with the current complex situation.

Of course, there is also good news in the market. Design software company Figma is about to go public soon. I will write a separate article to elaborate on the specific details. In short, Figma will be the fourth unicorn with a valuation of over $1 billion to go public this year after CoreWeave, Circle, and Chime. On the one hand, it will unlock a large number of VCs such as Index, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia Capital. On the other hand, it will further activate the liquidity of funds - these two things can very directly boost the confidence of the primary market.

This article is from the WeChat official account "China Venture Capital". Author: Pu Fan. Republished by 36Kr with permission.