There were 25 significant acquisitions of trade show businesses recorded in the UK between 2010 and 2020 . Of these 25 , no fewer than 15 were either sales or purchases by a private equity ( PE ) company . Of the many other smaller and thus unpublicised deals in those ten years , the majority were by businesses owned by PE – notably Clarion , Tarsus , CloserStill , Roar , Nineteen , Emerald , NEC and Comexposium .
As recently as 2000 PE was a tiny part of the financial world – with total deals that year reaching around $ 90bn ( that may sound a lot , but it is less than one twenty thousandth of US annual economic spend ).
But 20 years later , in 2021 alone , PE companies are estimated to have spent in excess of one trillion dollars ( that is $ 1,000bn ) on deals . Deals in the UK amounted to £ 21bn of that amount . Even more remarkable , in January 2022 PE companies were estimated to have more than $ 2 trillion in “ dry powder ” – in other words money sitting there available to spend . More money was spent , and more deals were done , in 2021 than in any other year , ever . Which , when one considers that much of the world ’ s economy was closed down for 18 months , is a truly in jaw-dropping fact .
Just to try to put that $ 2.2 trillion PE has available into some sort of context – it would pay the wages of 6m British workers for a year ; or you could buy 7m Nissan Qashqai ’ s with it – which is the next 24 years production in Sunderland .
Our financial world is private equity
EN guest editor Phil Soar tells us why the world of exhibitions revolves around private equity
I should stress that there are varying estimates of the total deals done annually by PE and venture capital , and the amounts spent by hedge funds . The quantum does vary somewhat but the broad thrust and direction of travel remains constant . I generally quote the numbers from the
FT and McKinsey .
Yet it is probably fair to say that most people in our industry have no
Phil Soar
direct experience of PE or understand what it is .
So , a simple primer for private equity If you know , you can skip the next few paragraphs .
As recently as the 1990s there were three basic ways of raising capital for a business or an acquisition . The first was personal wealth – usually of friends and family . The second was a bank loan . As long as you were prepared to place your house on the line as collateral , your friendly local
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