The Buyouts 100: Our list of the largest private equity fundraisers in North America

Is the private equity fundraising bacchanalia finally coming to an end? The numbers in our roundup of the 100 biggest North American fundraisers indicate that the party was starting to wind down in 2022. Hats off to Daniel Humphrey Rodriguez and Tom Zimmermann for compiling this year’s list.

As we chatted with LPs and GPs, the picture is getting murky, if not gloomy, for this year’s fundraising. Front and center: GPs are continuing to come to market with new funds, but LPs are out of capital from the slowing exit markets, and many are overexposed to the asset class, needing to make tough decisions on portfolio rebalancing.

With the economic picture so turbulent (the S&P 500 in ursine territory, recession fears, uncertain company valuations), GPs are holding off on exits, so the flow of distributions that used to go back to LPs from sales of portfolio companies is drying up.

“I think this was the year of tough choices anyway, given the volume of activity in the fundraising environment,” says Todd Silverman, managing principal with Meketa Investment Group.