Capital investors | Explanation: Venture capitalists have a record number of unsold companies

With capital investment companies holds a record 28,000 unsold companies worldwide, according to the annual review of the US consulting company Bain & Company.

According to the report, the value of companies owned by venture capitalists will rise to 3.2 trillion US dollars (about 2.9 trillion euros).

The background is both the strong growth of the capital market over the past ten years and the rise in interest rates, which has stifled the M&A market. The value and number of business deals fell sharply last year.

According to a report by Bain & Company, the combined value of companies sold by private equity investors last year fell 44 percent to $345 billion, the lowest in a decade.

At the same time, the number of capital investors' exits, i.e. acquisitions, fell by a quarter to just over a thousand.

Bain & Company's head of capital investment business Rebecca Burack says in the company's press release that the weak exit rate is a “very real” threat to venture capital investors' cash flows and the industry's liquidity.

According to the report, more than 40 percent of the companies on the sales list have been owned by venture capitalists for at least four years, says the British newspaper Financial Times.

Venture capitalists typically buy a company and develop it for 3-5 years in order to sell it on or list it on the stock exchange, so almost every other company owned by venture capitalists would already be ready for sale.

As private equity investors have difficulty selling their assets, it is also difficult for them to pay back the investors who invested in the private equity company's funds.

According to a report by Bain & Company, private equity is picking up globally this year. According to the report's assessment, the corporate market is supported by the drop in interest rates.