Accountancy Europe’s update on private equity in European accountancy and audit firms, listed on its website as July 2026, says the UK recorded 92 of the 385 transactions it identified in 2025, or 24%. The same paper restates the figure from the organisation’s first study, published on 4 June 2025: 233 transactions over the ten years from 2015, "or 40% of all identified deals". The two percentages describe different periods and should not be compared directly.
Where the 40% comes from
The June 2025 paper, "Private equity investments in accountancy firms", says that "more than 40% of the transactions occurred in the UK" between 2015 and 2025, and adds that UK-based firms drove "nearly half" of the deals in Europe. A chart in the same paper labels the UK at "233; 41%". The paper’s yearly charts let us rebuild the share for each year. The year-by-year shares in the table are our arithmetic from the chart values; the paper does not publish them.
| Year | Europe, PE accountancy deals | of which UK | UK share (our arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 to 2020, combined | 96 | 56 | 58% |
| 2021 | 34 | 11 | 32% |
| 2022 | 43 | 18 | 42% |
| 2023 | 112 | 41 | 37% |
| 2024 | 192 | 77 | 40% |
| 2025 (January to April) | 94 | 30 | 32% |
| 2015 to 2025 | 571 | 233 | 41% |
Two points follow from the table. First, the 40% is a share of a ten-year total, not of any one year. Second, the UK’s share was highest in the early years, when the whole market was small: the paper describes annual transactions "between 10 and 20" across Europe from 2015 to 2020, although its chart shows 8 in 2015 and 22 in 2016. In 2023 and 2024, when Europe-wide counts rose to 112 and 192, the UK share was 37% and 40% by our arithmetic.
What the update changed
The update covers January 2025 to April 2026. It reports 385 transactions for 2025 and 131 for the first four months of 2026, and states that the UK’s share "has decreased significantly compared to the 40% observed over the previous decade". It adds that the pattern "suggests that while the UK continues to lead the market, PE-backed consolidation is becoming less concentrated in a single jurisdiction", and, in its passage on the UK, that "the majority of these transactions involved small and medium-sized accounting practices".
| Country | 2025 deals | Share stated by the paper | Our share | Jan to Apr 2026 deals | Share stated by the paper | Our share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 92 | 24% | 23.9% | 41 | 32% | 31.3% |
| Norway | 78 | 23% | 20.3% | 17 | 13% | 13.0% |
| Sweden | 53 | Not stated | 13.8% | 11 | Not stated | 8.4% |
| All countries in the paper | 385 | 100% | 100% | 131 | 100% | 100% |
On our addition, the UK recorded 133 of the 516 transactions in the 16 months to April 2026, about 26%. The count itself did not fall: the June 2025 chart shows 77 UK transactions for 2024, and the update shows 92 for 2025. We do not draw a growth rate from the two, because the two papers do not state that they count in the same way (see below). What changed is the denominator. Norway recorded 78 transactions in 2025. The paper notes that 37 of them were by one group, Aider Konsern AS, backed by Castik Capital, which on our arithmetic is 47% of Norway’s 2025 count.
The audit-firm figures run differently. The update puts audit firms at 139 of the 385 deals in 2025, or 36%, and gives the UK 82 audit-firm transactions across January 2025 to April 2026, "approximately 41% of all identified audit-related" deals.
Limits of the figure
- One database. The update says it draws on a deal-level database compiled by Accountancy Europe from publicly reported transactions; the June 2025 paper describes its basis as "publicly available information and stakeholder outreach, combined with Accountancy Europe’s own research and analysis". The June 2025 paper says the data is "not intended to be exhaustive nor fully up to date". We have not matched the counts against another dataset, so every figure here is "according to Accountancy Europe".
- Counting method. The analysis is "performed on a transaction level", so one investor can appear in many transactions and in several countries. The 2025 update counts "direct investments and roll overs". The June 2025 paper does not say whether it counted them the same way, and the update does not say whether earlier years were revised.
- A partial year in the first paper. The June 2025 paper’s 2025 bar covers the first four months of the year only (its footnote 1), so the "2015 to 2025" total is ten years and four months. Our 32% for that bar should not be set against a full-year share.
- Overlapping periods. The first paper’s 2025 bar (January to April 2025) falls inside the update’s 2025 count, so the two periods overlap by four months.
- Small differences between the papers. The June 2025 paper gives the UK as "more than 40%" in its text and 41% in its chart; the update says 40%. The update gives the UK’s 2026 share as 32%, where 41 of 131 is 31.3% on our division, and Norway’s 2025 share as 23%, where 78 of 385 is 20.3%. For 2024 the June 2025 text says "around 200" Europe-wide transactions; its chart value is 192. The same paper’s text also says "nearly half"; its own chart gives 41%. The update’s outlook gives 497 transactions over sixteen months, while its own 2025 and 2026 totals add up to 516. We use the totals from the country table. Our earlier note on Grant Thornton UK’s count uses the text figure.
- Counts, not values. A share of deals says nothing about the size of the firms or the money involved.
Three readings
The 40% is a ten-year figure. Any sentence that uses it for the current market should name the period, 2015 to 2025, and the publisher.
On the same publisher’s later count, the UK’s share is lower. It is 24% for 2025 and 32% for the first four months of 2026, with the UK still the largest single country in both periods.
A few buyers can move a country’s share. The Norwegian figure includes 37 transactions by one group, so shares by country in this dataset can shift with the pace of individual consolidators.
Sources
- Accountancy Europe, "Private equity investments in accountancy firms", 4 June 2025: accountancyeurope.eu (PDF: 250602_PE-investment-in-accountancy-firms-clean-version.pdf). Supports the 2015 to 2025 yearly counts for Europe and the UK, the "more than 40%" and "nearly half" wording, the 233; 41% chart label, the transaction-level method and the non-exhaustive caveat.
- Accountancy Europe, "Private Equity in European Accountancy and Audit Firms: an update on market activity, January 2025 to April 2026", listed as July 2026: accountancyeurope.eu (publications page: accountancyeurope.eu). Supports the 2025 and 2026 country counts and shares, the 385 and 131 totals, the audit-firm figures and the statement on the UK’s falling share.
Related reading: Grant Thornton UK: 310 deals in 2025, up from 292; Kingsley Napley: 27% of 22 top-60 firms took PE; Grant Thornton UK: Cinven and the Fairgrove deal.
