According to the annual report: Ten challenges facing the private equity sector by Altius Associates (“Altius”), the US buyout market faces a challenging environment of rising purchase price multiples for high quality companies while in Europe, GPs have innovatively found sources of capital amongst sovereign wealth funds and public fund managers willing to bridge the pre-IPO gap.

In this week's digest from DealMarket: Environmental, social and government (ESG) risks in targets can be a dealbreaker; the biggest dealmakers in private equity; could a mega buyout be on the horizon for Dell? and legal firm Weil's predictions for 2013.

In this edition of its private equity spotlight, Preqin reviews the key fundraising features of the past 12 months and the main highlights of 2012, including significant buyouts and venture capital deals and exits.

In this edition of the PE digest, DealMarket looks at five trends in PE for France, top tech predictions for businesses and the UK's edge in financial technology innovation.

Preqin's latest research shows that North American deal flow reached a post-Lehman high in 2012. This contributed to strong global deal flow recorded in 2012, with 2,866 buyout deals announced valued at USD 254.6bn. This nears the global post-2008 highs of 2011, which witnessed USD 264.8bn globally from 2,900 buyout deals.