The exit logjam may be breaking
After several difficult years for private market exits, and a particularly bad H1 2026 according to KPMG¹⁴, managers are remarkably confident that activity is about to pick up.
Almost all of the professionals Ocorian surveyed¹⁵ expect exit activity to increase over the next 24 months. More strikingly, 78% expect a significant rise in traditional exits through trade sales, IPOs and secondaries. A further 20% expect some increase, although they believe continuation funds and other alternative structures will remain important.
That is a bullish call, but it is not unalloyed. The IPO market globally has certainly picked up in 2026, even though the volume of deals is still below the 2021 peak. Preqin’s Q2 update reported that private equity-backed IPOs and follow-on exits, increased from recent historic lows to 30, the highest quarterly level since Q4 2024. But the problems holding up exits have not simply gone away.
The bottlenecks are still there
Regulatory delays or complexity are cited by 66% as influencing the timing of exits. More than half, 53%, say portfolio companies are not yet ready to sell. Limited buyer appetite is a factor for 50%, uncertain market conditions for 47% and valuation gaps between buyers and sellers for 44%.
Tension in the ranks
There is an obvious tension between the two findings: industry professionals expect substantially more assets to come to market, while still acknowledging many of the conditions that have kept them there in the first place.
Some of that may simply be a view that conditions will improve over the next two years. Better buyer appetite, narrower valuation gaps or greater confidence in the economic outlook could release transactions that have already been delayed.
But there may be something else at work. Private market managers cannot defer exits indefinitely. Capital needs to be returned to LPs, particularly if managers also want those investors to commit to their next funds. After a prolonged period of slower distributions, the pressure for asset sales inevitably builds.
That does not necessarily mean forced sales. The ongoing importance respondents attach to continuation funds and alternative structures suggests managers expect to retain more options when a conventional sale is not yet on the table.
Managers clearly expect the logjam to break. But whether it is improving market conditions that will do the work, or whether it is the basic need to return capital that is forcing more assets through the system puts a very different complexion on the picture.
¹⁴ KPMG, Q2’26 Pulse of Private Equity KPMG, 27 July 2026
¹⁵ Ocorian’s 2026 asset manager survey of 300 senior executives at private equity fund managers
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