Private equity in Southeast Asia is making fewer, bigger bets
Two of the main annual surveys disagree on how much was invested in 2025, but agree on the direction. For property and platform founders, the implication is to build for a trade buyer.
By Alberto García Martínez, Managing Director, Harbourline Partners
If you read the annual private equity surveys for Southeast Asia side by side, the first thing you notice is that they do not agree on the size of the market. The second is that they agree on almost everything else. For founders of property and platform businesses wondering whether financial investors are a realistic source of capital or an exit, the agreement matters more than the numbers.
Two surveys, one direction
EY counted US$9.1 billion across 59 private equity deals in 2025, against US$16 billion across 67 in 2024, with only four deals above US$1 billion against eight the year before. Bain's report, published in April, put 2025 deal value at about US$14 billion across 84 transactions, down roughly 10%. The gap is mostly definitional: which investors count as private equity and which transaction types are included. Neither is wrong.
On direction, they line up. Fewer deals. Capital concentrated in a small number of themes. EY found digital infrastructure took 42% of value, telecoms 12%, real estate 10% and energy 10%, and Singapore alone accounted for 74%. Bain's summary of the mood was that capital is concentrating in fewer deals and investors are more selective than at any point in recent years.
Exits are the constraint
The reason for the caution is on the other side of the ledger. Bain reported exit value down 32% in 2025, with trade sales the dominant route. EY counted 33 exits realising US$4.4 billion. When public markets in the region cannot reliably absorb a listing, a fund's exit is a sale to a strategic buyer or to another fund, and it prices new deals with that in mind.
Where platforms fit
Property platforms sit awkwardly in these figures. Real estate as an asset class draws a tenth of the money. Platform businesses that serve real estate draw very little, and the largest recent transaction went in the opposite direction to a listing: EQT took PropertyGuru private for about US$1.1 billion, and it left the New York Stock Exchange in December 2024. That deal fits the survey pattern exactly. One large, controlling bet on a category leader, by a fund able to hold it for years.
What founders should take from this
Three practical points. First, minority growth rounds from financial investors are scarce for businesses that are not category leaders, so structured deals, strategic minorities and joint ventures are more realistic than a classic growth round. Second, because trade sales dominate exits, the buyer a fund has in mind at entry is often a strategic one; building a business that a regional operator or a portal would want to own makes it more attractive to both. Third, the investors who are active use AI heavily in diligence, according to Bain, which means clean data and consistent reporting are noticed sooner and weigh more than they used to.