Investing in Europe – Private Equity activity 2020

On 6 May, Invest Europe released its annual report regarding private equity activity in Europe. According to the latest results, private equity activity in 2020 proved to be resilient in the COVID-19 pandemic, with an investment level of more than €88 billion, and fundraising over €100 billion for the third year running.

Despite the 12% drop in private equity investment in comparison with 2019, the amount was still 18% higher than the average of the previous 5 years. A total of 8,163 companies received investment, of which 85% were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In terms of Venture Capital (VC) investment, the report shows its best year on record, with VC investment reaching €12 billion (€8.5 billion at EU-27 level) and backing 5005 companies. This is the eighth successive year of growth for VC. Within Europe (which includes more countries than the EU-27), the United Kingdom is the country with the highest amount of VC invested in 2020 with almost €2.8 billion, followed by France with €2 billion and Germany with €1.9 billion. However, as a percentage of GDP, Finland was by far the best performing country with 0.209%, followed by the United Kingdom with 0.118% and the Netherlands with 0.113%.

Even though the United Kingdom remains the most attractive European country for VC with an annual average growth rate of 5% between 2007 and 2020, several EU countries have been catching-up fast, such as Germany with a rate of 7%, France (8%), Spain (9%) and Netherlands (10%), both with VC invested almost reaching €1 billion in 2020.

More information.