The overall finding of the study: a market somewhere between “average” and “poor”, with continued pressure on purchase prices. But the average conceals the fact that two groups of investors are looking at two very different markets.

Market conditions by company size
Pricing pressure is almost exclusively a Mid- and Large-Cap phenomenon: 59% of respondents in these segments consider prices too high. In the Micro- and Small-Cap segment, only 26% say the same, while another 26% even describe prices as “good” or “very good”. The explanation is structural and directly relevant to sourcing strategy: the upper end of the market has long since become institutionalized and highly efficient. Pan-European and US funds compete for the same assets, processes are highly competitive and multiples are auction-driven. The smaller-cap segment, by contrast, is more information-intensive and less liquid. Deals more often originate from succession situations, frequently without a broad sales process, and the main competition may sometimes come from relationship banks rather than PE funds. Those investing in Small-Cap therefore compete less on price and more on access, speed and trust with the seller – a fundamentally different game from the bidding race in the upper segment.

Investors focused on special situations also see a more favorable market:
81% of distressed investors rate asset availability as “good” or “very good”, compared with 60% of Growth investors. This reflects the counter-cyclical nature of the business model: the same market conditions – weak growth and high interest rates – that make growth deals more expensive and scarce are filling the pipeline for restructuring investors. Their raw material is the stress that others seek to avoid.

The real market observation – bifurcation rather than average:
The same pattern appears repeatedly throughout the additional findings of the study: the market is divided, not average. Among the small number of genuinely attractive assets, quality, price expectations and competition are all high at the same time. Weaker assets may be cheaper, but they are also far less attractive. Real competition takes place almost exclusively at the top end. A blanket assessment of the market as “average” therefore misrepresents reality – the distribution is binary, not normal.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
There is no single PE market, but at least four – defined by investment approach and company size – operating across a bifurcated asset landscape. Anyone calibrating deal strategy and pricing discipline against the market average is calibrating against a number that does not exist in any individual real-world deal. The relevant question is never “How is the market doing?”, but rather: “How is my segment performing – and, for this particular asset, am I on the expensive side or the quieter side of the divide?”

The study shows the order of priorities: transparency first, then leadership, with everything operational coming later. The Deep Dive turns the question around – what happens to this order when the starting point changes?

Two things are non-negotiable, regardless of the situation.
A KPI and reporting structure and leadership alignment rank at the very top in every segment. This is more than a given: it means that the actual value creation plan – margin drivers, working capital, pricing – comes later for respondents. Transparency and leadership are not simply the first items on the action list; they are the conditions that make it possible to work through the list at all. If the reporting foundation and leadership setup are not in place within the first 100 days, everything that follows is being managed without visibility.

From that point on, the plan becomes a reflection of the situation – and the variation is greater than the study average would suggest.
In Distressed and Carve-Out situations, transparency on liquidity receives 100% agreement. But the more revealing figure is not the 100%, but the gap to the 62% in the Growth segment: a difference of 38 percentage points on a single topic. In a restructuring situation, the 13-week cash flow forecast is not just another reporting component, but the steering instrument on which the company’s survival depends. In a growing platform company, by contrast, it is one hygiene factor among many. The same logic applies to working capital: from 19% (Growth) to 83% (Distressed). For a Growth investor, tied-up capital is an optimization topic for year two; for a restructuring investor, it is the fastest available source of internal financing, often the only cash lever that can be activated without a discussion with the bank.

And what moves down the priority list when pressure increases? The offensive agenda.
Optimizing the sales, pricing and marketing approach drops from 44% (Growth) to 25% (Distressed). This is not a decision to abandon growth, but a deliberate sequencing choice: a pricing or market offensive built on an unstable cost base consumes management capacity and customer credibility before the foundation is strong enough to support it. An experienced operator knows that pushing the top line too early in a turnaround does not accelerate the restructuring – it puts it at risk, because it ties up resources that are needed for stabilization.

Company size reveals a second, more subtle dividing line.
In the Micro- and Small-Cap segment, 96% consider a KPI and reporting structure essential – compared with only 85% in Mid- and Large-Cap. An eleven-percentage-point difference, and one that says a great deal about the starting point: larger PortCos usually already have a functioning reporting setup, so the focus is on refinement and consolidation. In the smaller segment – often owner-managed and grown on Excel and gut feeling – the structure first has to be created, which is precisely why it is seen as most urgent. The practical implication for the deal: in Small-Cap, building the reporting setup is not a by-product, but a value creation lever in its own right, with its own budget, capacity and timeline. Treating it as something that “runs alongside everything else” means losing control of the first six months – and with it the window in which trust between PE and management is established.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
The 100-day plan is not a standard template, but a thesis about the starting point – and the most expensive mistake is applying a familiar playbook to the wrong situation. A Growth team that reflexively applies its plan to a Carve-Out will systematically underestimate liquidity management; a Turnaround team that applies its cash-control reflexes to a healthy platform asset will suffocate growth through excessive control. The real capability lies not in the plan itself, but in diagnosing which plan is needed – and in explaining that credibly to management in week one.

The study identifies the top levers: data transparency (77%), management adjustment (75%) and a market offensive (55%). The Deep Dive shows that Growth investors and restructuring specialists reach into the same toolbox – and pull out almost opposite tools.

In growth mode, offensive levers dominate.
Data transparency (72%), management adjustment (65%) and a pricing/market offensive (52%) form the top three. The sequence is no coincidence, but a chain of impact: transparency creates the factual basis, the right management translates it into decisions, and only then can the market offensive deliver results. Reverse that sequence and start with the offensive, and you scale assumptions instead of insights.

In a special situation, the leading lever collapses – and this is the most instructive data point in the entire chart.
Data transparency falls from 72% to 5%. Anyone reading this as “transparency is unimportant in a Distressed situation” fundamentally misunderstands the result. The opposite is true: it is so indispensable that it is no longer even perceived as a selectable value creation lever – it is already a prerequisite, the first thing to be established before closing (see Fig. 1: 100% transparency on liquidity). A lever only appears as a “Top 3” choice in this question if it is optional and differentiating. What is non-negotiable paradoxically disappears from the list. When interpreting rankings like these, this means that low values for fundamental topics do not necessarily indicate irrelevance, but may instead signal that they are taken for granted – and this distinction separates an experienced reader from a superficial one.

And below that? No single dominant lever.
While one lever clearly dominates the Growth case at 72%, responses in Distressed are much more widely distributed: cost optimization (23%), working capital (17%), management adjustment (10%). This is not indecision, but the nature of a turnaround: there is rarely one major lever, but rather a bundle of measures that need to be pulled simultaneously under time pressure – cash, costs, core processes, leadership, all in parallel. For Value Creation management, this requires a fundamentally different governance model: the Growth case allows for focus and a small number of deep initiatives; the Distressed case requires a tightly managed action cockpit with many smaller workstreams that are followed through consistently.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
Experience is not demonstrated by knowing the levers, but by knowing when to pull which one – and by reading the ranking correctly. A lever that disappears from the Top 3 list has either become irrelevant or is so fundamental that it is no longer up for debate. These two situations look identical in the chart, but operationally they mean the exact opposite. Anyone comparing value creation lever rankings across segments should therefore always ask: does the low value indicate that the lever has been abandoned – or that it is already a fulfilled prerequisite?

The study reveals an uncomfortable figure: Only 25% of respondents enter the process with a fully quantified action plan, while 70% settle for rough prioritization – and, in hindsight, 42% rate their own execution plans as “unrealistic”. The Deep Dive answers the question the print study deliberately leaves open: What is really behind this?

Nobody says “not at all” – and that is the first important finding.
Not a single respondent considers it impossible to formulate at least initial hypotheses during DD. The gap therefore lies not in whether this can be done, but in how deeply. And that is precisely where the field begins to separate.

Growth investors get further during DD – but the difference is one of access, not capability.
79% reach a medium to high level of detail (58% + 21%), compared with 69% for Distressed and Carve-Out investors, while the share entering with a fully quantified plan falls from 21% to 15%. The reason is structural: In a growth deal, the data room is curated, the target company is cooperative, and management is incentivized to present the business in the best possible light. In special situations, the information base is incomplete, reporting is often poor, and reliable figures only emerge after closing, once the investor has direct access to the systems. The lower level of quantification in Distressed situations is therefore not a sign of lower investor quality, but a reflection of the target’s data reality.

The actual thesis of the study goes deeper – and applies across segments:
In hindsight, execution plans do not fail because the objectives were wrong, but because of the timeline. And the timeline does not slip because of negligence, but because Value Creation is treated as an additional burden alongside day-to-day business instead of being managed as a dedicated task backed by sufficient capacity.

Hardly any firm considers quantification unimportant – most simply fail in practice to consistently make the step from an initial hypothesis to a fully calculated action plan. What is missing is neither willingness nor methodology, but a dedicated function responsible for prioritization, pace and follow-through.

The operational consequence can be stated very clearly:
A value creation plan without dedicated execution capacity is a statement of intent, not a plan. Anyone looking to close the 42% realism gap will not do so through better DD models, but through the execution setup after closing – clearly assigned Value Creation ownership with dedicated time, a rolling target-vs.-actual process instead of a frozen 100-day document, and an honest timeline that factors in available management capacity rather than ignoring it.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
The depth of quantification during DD measures the target’s data situation; execution success afterwards measures the investor’s capacity discipline. Taken together, these two figures reveal the real lesson of this study page: the bottleneck in Value Creation is not analytical, but organizational. Anyone who does not reserve dedicated execution capacity after closing will inevitably look back at their own plans twelve months later and describe them as “unrealistic” – not because the plans were wrong, but because nobody had the time to execute them.

The study shows that management soft and hard skills are clearly considered the most relevant levers for value enhancement. The Deep Dive shows just how strongly their relative importance shifts depending on the situation.

In special situations, toughness matters more than charisma – and the reversal is remarkably pronounced.
In the overall picture, management soft skills (leadership style, culture, communication) clearly lead. In Distressed situations, the relationship reverses: hard skills – proven sector and transformation experience – jump to 82% “very relevant”, the highest individual score in the entire question, while soft skills fall from 86% to 64%. The mechanism behind this is straightforward: in a crisis, there is no time for a learning curve. There is simply not enough time to allow a culturally strong but professionally uncertain management team to mature on the job. What is needed is someone who has already been through this kind of turnaround and knows from day one which decisions need to be made and in what order.

In a crisis, governance shifts from an organizing principle to a value creation lever.
Clear decision rights and accountability rise sharply from 31% (Growth) to 64% (Distressed) – effectively doubling. In a healthy growth situation, governance can be treated as an advisory board topic; in a turnaround, it determines whether difficult measures are actually implemented or get lost in endless coordination loops. This is consistent with what respondents acknowledge off the record: the most expensive recurring mistake is holding on to the wrong management for too long. Governance with real decision-making authority is the instrument that shortens this delay.

The data levers are the quiet consensus across segments – with one revealing twist.
A standardized Data Cube as a Single Source of Truth reaches 55% “very relevant” in Distressed situations (Growth: 45%). Precisely where decisions must be made under time pressure and with incomplete information, one reliable numerical foundation becomes critical to survival – there is no room for a second version of the truth. The contrast with ERP is telling: a new ERP system is considered overrated across all segments (only 5% “very relevant”). Respondents therefore make a clear distinction between data availability (highly relevant) and system replacement (time-consuming, risky and rarely able to pay back within the value creation window) – a distinction that often becomes blurred in practice when “digitalization” is broadly presented as a value creation lever.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
The ranking of value creation levers is never absolute, but a function of the risk profile. In a crisis, proven experience beats development potential, and decisive authority beats consensus – because there is no time to wait for capabilities to mature. For practice, this means two things: First, management assessment should be weighted by segment – using the same scorecard for Growth and Turnaround situations is misleading. Second, a consistent data foundation is the only lever that ranks highly in both worlds – making it the most reliable candidate for an investment that pays off regardless of the scenario.

The study places Current Trading (74%) and management quality (71%) at the top of the factors driving exit success. The Deep Dive shows which of these become even more critical in special situations.

Credibility beats almost everything – and this is the figure that truly drives an exit process.
“Current Trading vs. Business Plan” – in other words, whether current performance delivers what the plan promises – reaches 73% “critical” in Growth situations and 83% in Distressed. The mechanism behind this is the asymmetry of buyer psychology: a buyer pays for the future, but trusts only the past. If Current Trading deteriorates in the final quarters before signing, it is not only the current figure that collapses, but the credibility of the entire Business Plan – and with it the multiple. That is exactly why the final stretch before exit is not the time for ambitious bets, but for predictability: better to set a conservative plan and outperform it with confidence than to set an ambitious target and narrowly miss it.

Timing becomes the real art in a crisis.
Process maturity / timing rises to 55% “critical” in Distressed situations (Growth: 39%). In a restructuring exit, the sales window is narrow and missing it is disproportionately costly. Sell too early, and the turnaround has not yet been demonstrated in robust numbers, so the buyer will not pay for the potential. Sell too late, and the turnaround story begins to fade – or the market turns. In a Growth case, a rising trend can compensate for suboptimal timing. In a Turnaround, there is no such tolerance.

And the Equity Story? This is where Growth and Distressed diverge most clearly.
In Growth situations, it is critical (60%); in Distressed situations, significantly less so (42%). The reason lies in the different burden of proof: a Growth case sells a credible future, so the narrative carries weight. A Turnaround case sells demonstrated progress – here, it is not the better story that convinces, but the proven delta between entry and today. A polished Equity Story without hard turnaround numbers can even be counterproductive in a special situation, because it creates skepticism rather than resolving it.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
Exit success is not determined on the day of sale, but in the four to six quarters leading up to it – through Current Trading that confirms the plan, and timing that captures demonstrated progress at the point when it is most clearly evidenced. Both depend on having reliable numbers early. This closes the loop back to the first phase: the reporting foundation that may seem like a tedious requirement in the first 100 days is exactly the instrument that protects the multiple three years later. Anyone who only establishes exit readiness once the process has started is negotiating from a defensive position.

The study places Current Trading (74%) and management quality (71%) at the top of the factors driving exit success. The Deep Dive shows which of these become even more critical in special situations.

Credibility beats almost everything – and this is the figure that truly drives an exit process.
“Current Trading vs. Business Plan” – in other words, whether current performance delivers what the plan promises – reaches 73% “critical” in Growth situations and 83% in Distressed. The mechanism behind this is the asymmetry of buyer psychology: a buyer pays for the future, but trusts only the past. If Current Trading deteriorates in the final quarters before signing, it is not only the current figure that collapses, but the credibility of the entire Business Plan – and with it the multiple. That is exactly why the final stretch before exit is not the time for ambitious bets, but for predictability: better to set a conservative plan and outperform it with confidence than to set an ambitious target and narrowly miss it.

Timing becomes the real art in a crisis.
Process maturity / timing rises to 55% “critical” in Distressed situations (Growth: 39%). In a restructuring exit, the sales window is narrow and missing it is disproportionately costly. Sell too early, and the turnaround has not yet been demonstrated in robust numbers, so the buyer will not pay for the potential. Sell too late, and the turnaround story begins to fade – or the market turns. In a Growth case, a rising trend can compensate for suboptimal timing. In a Turnaround, there is no such tolerance.

And the Equity Story? This is where Growth and Distressed diverge most clearly.
In Growth situations, it is critical (60%); in Distressed situations, significantly less so (42%). The reason lies in the different burden of proof: a Growth case sells a credible future, so the narrative carries weight. A Turnaround case sells demonstrated progress – here, it is not the better story that convinces, but the proven delta between entry and today. A polished Equity Story without hard turnaround numbers can even be counterproductive in a special situation, because it creates skepticism rather than resolving it.

DEEP DIVE INSIGHT:
Exit success is not determined on the day of sale, but in the four to six quarters leading up to it – through Current Trading that confirms the plan, and timing that captures demonstrated progress at the point when it is most clearly evidenced. Both depend on having reliable numbers early. This closes the loop back to the first phase: the reporting foundation that may seem like a tedious requirement in the first 100 days is exactly the instrument that protects the multiple three years later. Anyone who only establishes exit readiness once the process has started is negotiating from a defensive position.