Asia-Pacific PE activity in 2025—led by powerhouses Japan, Australia and Greater China—has been strong, reflecting the inroads PE houses have made in the region’s companies, incrementally more diffuse share registers and increased capital markets discipline. Together, these conditions create growing opportunities for control buyouts.
At US$137 billion, buyout deal value for APAC rose by nearly 25 percent in the first three quarters of 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier, when it stood at US$110 billion. By deal count, the year to Q3 2025 saw a slight decline, from 1,813 transactions in the first three quarters of 2024 to 1,691, a 6.7 percent fall. However, this trend is closely in line with the overall M&A market. At the time of writing (December 15), this year’s buyout value figure had risen to US$178 billion, ahead of the full-year total for 2024 (US$168 billion).
Big deals
As the rising value and falling volume attest, Asia-Pacific’s PE deals are getting larger as firms are increasingly securing more majority buyout opportunities than the historically more prevalent growth and minority stakes deals. Buyouts have historically accounted for only around 30 percent of APAC’s private equity market by value, but in the past three years, they have consistently taken a share of at least 50 percent, according to HarbourVest analysis.
As PE sponsors in the region have captured this emerging deal flow, funds have been able to raise larger funds to pursue this attractive opportunity set, including global players. KKR, for example, recently started a new Asia-focused fundraise, targeting at least US$15 billion. EQT is expecting to reach the US$14.5 billion hard cap on its latest Asia fund in early 2026, while Blackstone is reportedly seeking US$10 billion for its third Asia fund.
A handful of large deals have contributed to the higher value of APAC buyouts in 2025, including BlackRock’s US$19.2 billion infrastructure investment in Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings and Bain Capital’s US$5.5 billion Japanese carve-out of supermarket group York Holdings from Seven & i Holdings.
Public-to-private activity soaring
However, the region’s big story of the year is take-private activity. In the first nine months, there were 81 take-privates in the APAC region, already outstripping the 72 deals recorded in all of 2024. Leading this charge are Japan, Singapore, China and Australia. At the time of writing (December 15), the year-to-date figure had risen to 106 such deals.
Meanwhile, in aggregate value, the first three quarters of 2025 saw APAC take-private deals worth US$28.2 billion, well ahead of the US$23.7 billion total recorded for the corresponding period in 2024. Once again, Japan saw the highest value total, followed by Australia, China and Singapore. At the time of writing (December 15), the value total had risen to US$45.6 billion, already ahead of the US$41 billion recorded in the whole of 2024.
Activity has also been broad-based in industry terms. Only two sectors—holding companies and oil and gas—have seen no take-privates this year (to December 15). By value, the top three subsectors have been transportation, real estate and machinery. By volume, computers and electronics, professional services, and healthcare take the top three positions.
A deeper dive
In the first nine months of the year, the largest take-privates in APAC were Blackstone’s US$3.4 billion delisting of Japanese IT services provider, TechnoPro, the firm’s largest-ever investment in Japan; KKR’s US$2.8 billion buyout of Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed optical equipment maker Topcon; and EQT’s US$2.7 billion deal for Japanese elevator-maker Fujitec.
At the end of November, these Japan-focused take-privates were joined by two Australian megadeals. The largest of these saw Macquarie Asset Management announce its intention to buy shipping container company Qube for around US$7.5 billion. This deal was swiftly followed by Brookfield Asset Management and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC’s announcement of a take-private deal for self-storage operator National Storage REIT for US$2.7 billion.
Global buyers dominate the list of the region’s top ten take-privates for the year, with just four acquirers local to the APAC region. This aligns with global players’ expansion into Asia-Pacific in recent times. EQT, for example, recently announced that its Asia chair, Jean Eric Salata, would succeed founder and current chair Conni Jonsson in May next year, underscoring how important Asian markets have become for the firm.
Meanwhile, Blackstone’s TechnoPro take-private was the firm’s 24th PE deal in Asia since 2024, and KKR recently said that half of the capital it would return to investors this year would come from Asia.
The region’s growth prospects and investor desire to diversify exposures away from the US dollar in a more geopolitically complex environment are some of the draws for global firms. The International Monetary Fund forecasts for Asia-Pacific’s GDP growth in 2025 stand at 4.5 percent in 2025, compared with just 1.8 percent for North America and 1.2 percent for Western Europe.
Japanese reforms spur interest
Japan has attracted significant attention in recent years for corporate governance and stock market reforms. In recent years, the Tokyo Stock Exchange has been implementing guidance and listing rule changes, including, notably, a 2024 provision outlining a specific focus on companies with a price-to-book ratio below 1x. These changes are thought to have contributed to significant increases in dividends and share buybacks seen following the changes. While M&A-related corporate governance guidelines have had more mixed results in implementation, they have provided new rhetorical backing for would-be interlopers to an agreed deal or engaged investors who seek to effect change and increase capital markets discipline in the market.
However, shifts in a company’s shareholder base—particularly large changes that take a company which had been protected by stable shareholders toward a diffuse shareholder base, or where a stable shareholder shifts its allegiance against the management team—have been cited for both new take-private opportunities and activist campaigns. Such situations have increased on the margins, with, for example, insurance companies that have faced new government pressure to sell their listed company shares in Japan opening up more share registers. This, coupled with general investor hostility toward legacy poison pills seeking renewal, has made vulnerable a small but significant number of issuers, and brought them into the sights of both PE sponsors and other value investors seeking to create alpha.
Market participants generally cite increased shareholder pressure for a significant portion of Japan’s take-private opportunities in recent years. The country accounted for 54 percent of activist campaigns outside the US market in H1 2025, according to Barclays research.
Corporate governance was cited as a major rationale for KKR and JIC’s Topcon acquisition. A statement made by president and CEO Takeshi Eto said the deal would allow the company “to focus on bold, agile investments and management initiatives, including structural reforms, without being constrained by short-term uncertainties.”
There is also a trend for buyout firms to support portfolio companies with digital and AI strategies, including in legacy industries. This is frequently reported to be true of Japan, which, despite its reputation for technological innovation, currently sits in 30th place in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Rankings.
While global firms continue to amass capital for Asia, fundraising figures for the region have slowed in 2025. In the first three quarters of this year, total private capital raised was well below half of the total for 2024. PE fundraising declined by 82 percent in Q3 from the previous quarter, driven largely by local firms’ fundraising challenges. This decline suggests that global firms will continue to dominate the region’s public-to-private opportunities.
Looking ahead
With many large PE firms increasingly pivoting toward Asia, take-private activity looks set to continue at a brisk pace, especially in Japan, where changes in shareholder base and increased unsolicited M&A proposals by Japanese companies have made the public markets a less-safe refuge for a growing number of listed companies. Singapore may also see further de-listings, should new proposals be adopted; earlier this year, the regulator conducted a consultation on changes to the takeover code to bring the rules into line with international standards.
Other risks on the horizon include rising valuations. A key attraction of take-privates in some APAC countries is lower purchase prices relative to US markets. Yet Asia’s stock market performance has been particularly strong in 2025, with the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Index up by nearly 25 percent in the year to the end of November, higher than the 21.6 percent registered on the MSCI ACWI and the 20.6 percent on the MSCI World indices. This narrows the valuations gap. However, nearly half of listed companies in Japan, and more than half in Korea, continue to trade below book value, underscoring what remains an attractive environment for PE sponsors who are able to convince a management team to consider a take-private.
