At a media briefing for the Bain & Company 2025 Southeast Asia Private Equity Report, Suvir Varma, advisory partner at the firm's global private equity practice, said:"Deal-making was very good for SEA, but very good relatively speaking to the previous year. We have not yet gone back to the historic peaks that SEA saw on deal-making, but we should take the positive where we can get it."
Private equity (PE) activity in Southeast Asia (SEA) demonstrated remarkable resilience in 2024, navigating global economic headwinds, tighter capital markets and ongoing exit challenges. Despite persistent macroeconomic uncertainty worldwide, the region's strong demographics, rapid digitalisation, and growing private consumption offered a solid foundation for both deal-making and fundraising.
According to Deloitte's 2025 Asia Pacific Private Equity Almanac, SEA saw 69 PE-backed transactions totalling US$9.4 billion ($12.35 billion) last year, up from US$5.2 billion across 87 deals in 2023. Over the past three years, SEA's share of the Asia Pacific's (Apac) total PE deals nearly doubled, reaching 6.8% by the end of 2024. Bain & Company similarly noted that SEA's deal value surged by approximately 60% y-o-y, despite a slight decline in deal volume.
