Introduction

An important aspect of family offices’ role in supporting the strategy and legacy of family businesses is the smart stewardship of family wealth and assets, including through investments and deals. PwC’s Family Office Deals Study investigates these family-office-backed deals within or originating from Europe over the past decade by investigating a proprietary database of 5,200 single family offices worldwide.

The study reveals that after a short-lived decline in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic, the value of disclosed family office deals in 2021 reached USD 227.6 billion – a record high achieved in part thanks to a number of multi-billion-USD transactions. This was an important milestone, with family office-backed transactions making up 10% of the entire deals market for the first time ever.

The number of direct investments by family offices in Switzerland has also grown significantly in recent years, a development which has seen family offices become considerably more professional in their approach. There are signs that family business and entrepreneurs for whom price optimisation is not the only consideration are favouring family offices over conventional M&A channels.

Some overall takeaways of the study:

• The share of investments in Europe has reached a high point, while outbound deals are shrinking. 
• The number of “club deals” has multiplied by more than 25 times and reached its peak in 2020.
• The most attractive target markets for real estate investments are the US, the UK and Germany.
• Investments in the Healthcare & Biotech industry were the largest in terms of value at $255.9bn.