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PE/VC investments recorded a second consecutive year of decline in 2023. The dollar value of cumulative PE/VC investments fell by 11% y-o-y to $49.8 billion, primarily due to a 33% decline in overall deal volume – of which the primary contributor was the startup segment, which saw a sharp fall of 42% y-o-y in the number of deals and a 53% drop in dollar value of investments. As the share of startup in PE/VC investments fell to 17%, it also lost the title of being the largest segment, which it held since 2021. In 2023, we saw a trend similar to 2022 wherein the first half of the year saw the heightened activities (US$27.5 billion) which subsequently declined in the second half (US$22.2 billion). The PE/VC investments in infrastructure and real estate asset class recorded a y-o-y growth of 23% in 2023 (US$19.6 billion across 112 deals), and this helped to offset the significant fall in pure play PE investments which saw a 25% decline y-o-y.
The year 2023 observed a prominent uptrend across some sectors. Infrastructure and real estate emerged as the leading sectors. Real estate, healthcare and industrial products recorded all-time high investments with an impressive growth of 15%, 97%, and an 299% respectively. However, the traditionally favored sectors by PE such as financial services, technology and e-commerce faced a downturn recording a de-growth of 39%, 39% and 55% respectively. This year, 10 sectors recorded over US$1 billion investments (vs. 13 sectors in the previous year).