Targeted consultation on private equity exits

The primary audience of this consultation are private equity investors, particularly private equity and growth capital funds, as well as private companies. Other interested stakeholders may include businesses and public authorities and supervisors.

Despite past policy efforts, private equity investors in the EU continue to face challenges when seeking to exit their investments. For example, they may not be able to wait for an initial public offering (IPO) to realise capital gains, or the lack of a credible valuation of private assets may stand in the way of a transaction. Those difficulties reduce market activity, limiting the availability of growth capital and possibly prompting promising young companies to move outside the EU in search of funding

The purpose of this consultation is to collect evidence on possible barriers or issues for exiting private equity investments in the EU, merits and possible design features of a platform for secondary trading of private company shares, and merits of an extended use of such a platform for raising new equity capital.

Please note that in order to ensure a fair and transparent consultation process responses should be submitted through the online questionnaires.