IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bis/biswps/1326.html

Monetary policy and private equity acquisitions: tracing the links

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando Avalos
  • Boris Hofmann
  • José María Serena Garralda

Abstract

Private equity funds play an increasingly important role in financial systems. Yet, the impact of monetary policy on their activity has been little explored so far. In this paper, we analyse the transmission of monetary policy through private equity (PE) deals, focusing on the impact on: (i) the volume of private equity deals; (ii) the use of leverage; and (iii) the pricing of those deals. We find that contractionary monetary policy shocks to the short end of the yield curve tend to dampen private equity activity, by reducing deal volumes, the use of leverage and deal prices. A credit channel of monetary transmission seems to affect deal volumes and the use of leverage, while a valuation channel appears to drive the transmission to deal pricing. Monetary policy shocks to the long end of the yield curve have weaker effects on PE activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando Avalos & Boris Hofmann & José María Serena Garralda, 2026. "Monetary policy and private equity acquisitions: tracing the links," BIS Working Papers 1326, Bank for International Settlements.
    • Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:1326
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1326.pdf
    File Function: Full PDF document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1326.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kuttner, Kenneth N., 2001. "Monetary policy surprises and interest rates: Evidence from the Fed funds futures market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 523-544, June.
    2. Sharjil M. Haque & Simon Mayer & Teng Wang, 2024. "How Private Equity Fuels Non-Bank Lending," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-015, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    4. Kaplan, Steven, 1989. "The effects of management buyouts on operating performance and value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 217-254.
    5. Fernando Avalos & Sebastian Doerr & Gabor Pinter, 2025. "The global drivers of private credit," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    6. Olli-Matti Laine, 2023. "Monetary Policy and Stock Market Valuation," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 19(1), pages 365-416, March.
    7. Cieslak, Anna & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2019. "Non-monetary news in central bank communication," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 293-315.
    8. Lichtenberg, Frank R. & Siegel, Donald, 1990. "The effects of leveraged buyouts on productivity and related aspects of firm behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 165-194, September.
    9. Ulf Axelson & Tim Jenkinson & Per Strömberg & Michael S. Weisbach, 2013. "Borrow Cheap, Buy High? The Determinants of Leverage and Pricing in Buyouts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2223-2267, December.
    10. Horn, Carl-Wolfram & Fischer, Johannes J., 2021. "Does Monetary Policy Affect Mergers and Acquisitions?," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242445, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Mark Gertler & Peter Karadi, 2015. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 44-76, January.
    12. Adra, Samer & Barbopoulos, Leonidas G. & Saunders, Anthony, 2020. "The impact of monetary policy on M&A outcomes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    13. Sharjil M. Haque, 2023. "Does Private Equity Over-Lever Portfolio Companies?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-009, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Kaiji Chen & Jue Ren & Tao Zha, 2018. "The Nexus of Monetary Policy and Shadow Banking in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3891-3936, December.
    15. Dominic Cucic & Denis Gorea, 2024. "Non-bank lending and the transmission of monetary policy," BIS Working Papers 1211, Bank for International Settlements.
    16. Chevalier, Judith A & Scharfstein, David S, 1996. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Countercyclical Markups: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 703-725, September.
    17. Valentin Haddad & Erik Loualiche & Matthew Plosser, 2017. "Buyout Activity: The Impact of Aggregate Discount Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 371-414, February.
    18. Drechsler, Itamar & Savov, Alexi & Schnabl, Philipp, 2022. "How monetary policy shaped the housing boom," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 992-1021.
    19. Nadauld, Taylor D. & Weisbach, Michael S., 2012. "Did securitization affect the cost of corporate debt?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 332-352.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gorea, Denis & Kryvtsov, Oleksiy & Kudlyak, Marianna, 2022. "House Price Responses to Monetary Policy Surprises: Evidence from the U.S. Listings Data," IZA Discussion Papers 15481, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Argudo, Esteban, 2025. "Monetary policy transmission via nonbank lending: Evidence from peer-to-peer loans," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    3. Chiarella, Carlo & Ostinelli, Diego, 2020. "Financial or strategic buyers: Who is at the gate?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 393-407.
    4. Seung Kwak & Charles Press, 2023. "Pre-LBO Credit Market Conditions and Post-LBO Target Behavior," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-077, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Laséen, Stefan, 2020. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Central Bank Information Shocks, and Economic Activity in a Small Open Economy," Working Paper Series 396, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    6. Hiroyuki Kubota & Mototsugu Shintani, 2020. "High-frequency Identification of Unconventional Monetary Policy Shocks in Japan," CARF F-Series CARF-F-502, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    7. Ricardo Nunes & Ali Ozdagli & Jenny Tang, 2022. "Interest Rate Surprises: A Tale of Two Shocks," Working Papers 2213, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    8. Malenko, Andrey & Malenko, Nadya, 2015. "A theory of LBO activity based on repeated debt-equity conflicts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 607-627.
    9. Steven J. Davis & John C. Haltiwanger & Kyle Handley & Ben Lipsius & Josh Lerner & Javier Miranda, 2021. "The economic effects of private equity buyouts," Jena Economics Research Papers 2021-013, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    10. Bu, Chunya & Rogers, John & Wu, Wenbin, 2021. "A unified measure of Fed monetary policy shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 331-349.
    11. van der Zwan, Terri & Kole, Erik & van der Wel, Michel, 2024. "Heterogeneous macro and financial effects of ECB asset purchase programs," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    12. Gürkaynak, Refet S. & Kara, A. Hakan & Kısacıkoğlu, Burçin & Lee, Sang Seok, 2021. "Monetary policy surprises and exchange rate behavior," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    13. Paul Hubert & Fabien Labondance, 2019. "Central bank tone and the dispersion of views within monetary policy committees," Working Papers hal-03403256, HAL.
    14. Boeck, Maximilian & Feldkircher, Martin, 2021. "The Impact of Monetary Policy on Yield Curve Expectations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 887-901.
    15. Lu, Dong & Tang, Huoqing & Zhang, Chengsi, 2023. "China's monetary policy surprises and corporate real investment," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    16. Michael D. Bauer & Eric T. Swanson, 2023. "A Reassessment of Monetary Policy Surprises and High-Frequency Identification," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 87-155.
    17. Motto, Roberto & Özen, Kadir, 2022. "Market-stabilization QE," Working Paper Series 2640, European Central Bank.
    18. Yun, Jaeho, 2025. "Rethinking the delayed overshooting puzzle: An examination through present value framework," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    19. Aeimit Lakdawala, 2019. "Decomposing the effects of monetary policy using an external instruments SVAR," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(6), pages 934-950, September.
    20. repec:cam:camjip:2504 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Daniel J. Lewis & Christos Makridis & Karel Mertens, 2019. "Do Monetary Policy Announcements Shift Household Expectations?," Working Papers 1906, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, revised 17 Jan 2020.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:1326. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin Fessler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bisssch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.