TIME was, the private-equity industry felt spoiled for choice. The difficulty was choosing deals, not finding them. Yet according to numbers from Dealogic, a data provider, that have been crunched by Bain & Company, a consultancy, private-equity houses are now losing out in mergers and acquisitions (m&a) to non-financial companies. In 2016 private equity's global share of all deals dipped to 4.2%, the lowest level since the depths of the post-crisis recession in 2009. This was down from 5.4% as recently as 2014 and an all-time high of 7.9% in 2006. The same trend is evident in Europe and in America, private equity's two biggest markets (see chart).
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