Most active private equity buyers in 2026

• A transaction is a dated private equity deal in the DFX transaction record (a platform buyout, an add-on, a recapitalization or a growth investment) whose announcement names the firm as the sponsor on the buy side.
• The window is the period from 1 January 2026 to 7 October 2026.
• Each firm is counted once per transaction, however many of its funds or affiliates the announcement names.
• An add-on counts for the sponsor that owns the platform making it.
• The date is the announcement date.
• Ranked by the number of distinct counted events in the window. A tie is broken by the date of the firm's most recent counted event, then alphabetically.

Included

• Every firm with at least one counted transaction in the window.

Left out

• Strategic acquirers with no private equity sponsor, lenders, advisers and co-investors.
• Transactions with no announcement date, or announced outside the window.
• Names the record has not resolved to a firm.

• The leader has 24 transactions in the window.
• 275 firms recorded more than one.
• The events come from 522 distinct publishing sites.

• How this ranking is calculated
• Most active healthcare private equity buyers
• Most active independent sponsors
• Most active RIA acquirers
• Most active institutional allocators

• Press releases and portfolio news published by the buyers, the sellers and their advisers, each kept with its URL

Every source DFX reads is listed with its rights determination on the sources page.

• All rankings
• Every private equity transaction
• Private equity buyers by niche