Deal of the Year Awards
PE Hub unveils the private equity firms behind the best exits of 2025, from large-cap to small-cap, North America to Europe
Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman took home the top prize in PE Hub’s 26th annual Deal of the Year Awards, which recognize exceptional exits that were realized in 2025.
The private equity trio won the Overall Deal of the Year Award, as well as the Large-Cap North America Award. The group’s $7.2 billion IPO of Medline Industries set several records: the largest private equity-backed IPO ever, the biggest healthcare IPO of all time and the largest public offering of 2025. All that came despite a difficult IPO market.
Listed in December, the IPO was 12x subscribed and valued the medical supplies maker at $65 billion, based on its closing price at the end of the first day of trading. The three large-cap investors had bought Medline in 2021 at a valuation of $34 billion, own equal shares and together hold the majority stake.
Getting such a deal over the line was no small feat. Starting with a wave of optimism about a big M&A comeback, last year’s dealmaking floundered in April as tariff turmoil roiled markets. But confidence began to return and grew, with Medline’s jumbo December listing a fitting symbol of the private equity industry’s renewed expectations at the end of the year.
PE Hub received hundreds of nominations for the 2025 awards. Our criteria for selecting the winners included a wide array of metrics, such as multiples on invested capital; internal rates of return; EBITDA growth; employee retention, expansion and participation in exit proceeds; and add-on deals and organic growth. We also looked at investment rationale and plans, as well as methods of growth and how exits were made. And we considered the significance of transactions within a sector and how they exemplified the year’s challenges and opportunities.