For buyers · Germany

    Add-On Acquisitions in Germany

    Add-on acquisitions in Germany have the same economics as anywhere else, cheaper entry than a platform and value created by combining, and one difference that decides outcomes: the targets are owner-run companies that are not for sale in any visible sense. Across Europe, two out of three private equity buyouts are now add-ons. In Germany, platforms complete fewer of them per holding period than their peers abroad, and the constraint is not capital.

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    This page is for platform CEOs, heads of M&A and sponsor deal partners who want to add German companies to a platform, whether the platform sits in Germany or not. It covers what the German add-on market looks like in numbers, why owner-run targets are hard to reach, what an owner needs to hear from a platform, and how FISART runs add-on origination on a scoped mandate.

    Key takeaways

    • Add-ons made up about two thirds of European PE buyouts in early 2025 and 35.4 percent of European PE deal value in 2025, the second-highest add-on value in a decade (PitchBook).
    • The DACH region recorded 450 buyout transactions including add-ons in 2025, up 15 percent on 2024, with more than 300 active PE funds and over 30 billion euros of dry powder (Roland Berger on Preqin data, July 2026). Germany carries about four fifths of the region's PE deal value.
    • German platforms added on average 2.4 companies in 2022, against 4.0 for platforms globally (Mergermarket data via Eight Advisory). The gap is origination, not money.
    • The supply exists: about 186,000 German companies are due for a handover between 2026 and 2030, 29 percent of family-business successions go to external buyers, and 69 percent of owners say finding a suitable successor is the hardest part (IfM Bonn, KfW Research).
    • Owners do not answer database-driven outreach. They sell to the buyer who explains who will run the company and what happens to the people, in German, before talking price.
    • FISART runs add-on origination in Germany on a scoped mandate with a defined target profile, a retainer credited against a success fee, and owners handed over once they have confirmed their intent.

    Last updated: October 2026 · Byline: Lud Schroedl

    Who this is for

    PE platforms, sponsors, consolidators

    Target profile

    Owner-run, lower-middle market

    Where

    Germany, Austria and Switzerland on request

    Model

    Scoped mandate, retainer plus success fee

    How much of German buyout activity is add-ons?

    2 in 3

    European PE buyouts that were add-ons, early 2025 (PitchBook)

    450

    DACH buyouts including add-ons in 2025 (Preqin via Roland Berger)

    2.4 vs 4.0

    Add-ons per platform, Germany vs global, 2022 (Mergermarket via Eight Advisory)

    186,000

    German company handovers expected 2026 to 2030 (IfM Bonn)

    Add-ons have been the majority of European buyouts for a decade. PitchBook counted more than 4,000 add-on deals in Europe in 2024 and put the add-on share of European PE buyouts at 66.7 percent in early 2025, below the 74 percent seen in the United States but on the same trend. In 2025 European sponsors did fewer and larger add-ons: 3,661 deals by December against a record year before, while add-on value rose to about 207 billion euros, or 35.4 percent of all European PE deal value.

    The German-speaking region is the second-largest buyout market in Europe after the UK and Ireland, with about 15 percent of European transaction volume. Roland Berger, working from Preqin data, counts 450 completed buyout transactions including add-ons in DACH in 2025, up from 393 in 2024, and 204 in the first half of 2026, 15 percent below the first half of 2025. More than 300 PE funds are based in the region and held over 30 billion euros of undeployed capital at the end of 2025. Germany accounts for about four fifths of the region's PE deal value and three quarters of its deal count.

    Measured by equity invested, the German buyout segment reached 10.66 billion euros in 2025, up from 9.1 billion the year before, out of 15.69 billion euros of total private equity and venture investment in German companies (BVK preliminary statistics, March 2026). Buyouts were 13 percent of the 897 companies financed, so the German buyout market is a market of roughly a hundred-plus companies a year at the equity level, most of them lower-middle market. BVK counts equity only, not transaction value, so these figures are not comparable with deal-value statistics.

    Why do German platforms complete fewer add-ons than their peers abroad?

    In 2022, platform companies worldwide acquired an average of 4.0 add-ons, up from 2.9 in 2015; German platforms acquired 2.4, up from 2.0 in 2019 (Mergermarket data analysed by Eight Advisory, as reported in May 2023). The gap is not appetite: the number of German add-on acquisitions rose from 62 in 2015 to 282 in 2022, and German buy-and-build volume reached a five-year high of almost 14 billion euros that year, 8.5 billion of it cross-border. The same analysis found that platforms slow down after about five add-ons and that only 15 percent complete more than six, which says as much about sourcing capacity as about integration.

    Three things slow German platforms down. The first is the structure of the target pool: most German companies of add-on size are owner-run, unlisted, not in any process and not represented by an advisor. The second is the owner: 57 percent of Mittelstand owners were 55 or older in 2025, the average owner is over 54, and the ones who want to hand over within two years are on average 66.5 (KfW Research). They have run the company for decades, they have been written to by funds many times, and they answer the person they trust, not the fund with the best thesis. The third is capacity: a platform's M&A team of two or three people can run two or three processes at once, and German origination is slow in the early phase because trust comes before documents.

    The result is a market where capital waits. The German supply side is measured: IfM Bonn expects about 186,000 company handovers between 2026 and 2030 and finds that 29 percent of family-business successions go to external buyers. The demand side is funded. What is missing between them is a channel to owners that does not depend on the owner being on a list.

    Which sectors see the most add-on activity in Germany?

    By deal count in DACH in 2025, technology, software and digital solutions led with 149 transactions, followed by business services and logistics with 78 and industrial goods and engineering with 67; pharma and healthcare grew fastest at 36 percent year on year, while consumer goods, automotive and chemicals declined (Roland Berger on Preqin, July 2026). Earlier German add-on data shows the same shape: in 2022, TMT, business services and healthcare were the three most active buy-and-build sectors, and in business services almost every fifth transaction was an add-on (Eight Advisory).

    Sector groupDACH deals 2025 (Preqin via Roland Berger)Change vs 2024
    Technology, software, digital solutions149plus 30 percent
    Business services and logistics78plus 22 percent
    Industrial goods and engineering67plus 10 percent
    Pharma and healthcarenot broken out in the summaryplus 36 percent
    Consumer goods and retailnot broken out in the summaryminus 22 percent

    The sectors that work for add-ons share four traits: many owner-run companies of similar size, recurring or contracted revenue, a regulatory or licensing structure that rewards scale without blocking it, and a succession wave that brings owners to the table. In Germany that describes professional and technical services, craft and building services trades such as heating and climate installation, insurance distribution, receivables management, healthcare services, IT services and specialised manufacturing. The platforms active in these sectors in Germany range from domestic consolidators to Nordic, Benelux, UK and US sponsors entering the market, and most of them are looking at the same database targets.

    Why do database targets fail, and why do owners stop answering?

    Every platform in a sector starts from the same list. The Handelsregister, Bundesanzeiger filings and commercial databases give the same five hundred names to everyone, and the owners on those lists receive letters and emails from several funds a year. Response rates fall with every wave, and the owners who do respond are often the ones already running a process, which means an auction and a platform multiple instead of an add-on multiple.

    PitchBook's reading of 2025, fewer and larger add-ons, is partly this: the easy targets have been bought, and the remaining owner-run companies are harder to reach. Buy-and-build research has long pointed in the same direction. The HHL and BCG analysis of more than 2,000 PE deals found that the share of deals with add-ons rose from 20 percent in 2000 to 53 percent in 2012, that small platforms gain most from add-ons, and that adding depth in the core industry beats adding breadth (BCG, 2016). Depth in a German sector means reaching owners who are not for sale yet.

    What works instead is slower and more personal: a German-speaking counterpart who can sit across from the owner, an approach that starts with the company and the people rather than with a valuation, introductions through the owner's own network of tax advisors, banks and trade associations, and patience measured in months. That is a sourcing function, and most platforms do not have it in Germany.

    What does a German owner need to hear from a platform before the first call?

    Three things, in this order. Who will run the company after closing, and whether the owner's own role continues for a time. What happens to the employees, in writing, because the owner knows them by first name. Whether the buyer understands what the company actually does, which a platform in the same sector can show in one sentence and a generalist fund cannot.

    A platform has an advantage here that a fund does not: it is a company, run by operators, in the owner's own trade. Used well, that is the strongest argument in German add-on origination. Used badly, with a term sheet before a visit, a valuation range in the first email or a deal team that changes between calls, it reads like every other fund letter. The owner side of a German acquisition, including the formalities a platform should know before promising a date, is covered in our guide to buying a business in Germany.

    How does FISART run add-on origination in Germany?

    FISART runs buy-side mandates for platforms and sponsors that want German add-ons and do not have a sourcing team on the ground. The work has six steps.

    1. 01

      Criteria workshop

      We define the target profile with you: sector, size band, region, revenue model, what you will not buy. The profile goes into the mandate and defines what counts as a target.

    2. 02

      Origination

      We reach German owners who fit the profile directly, in German, through channels that do not depend on the owner being on a list. Most of them are not in any process.

    3. 03

      Qualification

      An owner becomes a target when he has confirmed his intent to sell in conversation, passed a short review of the business and agreed to be introduced to you. You receive qualified owners, not names.

    4. 04

      Introduction

      We prepare the first meeting on both sides and sit in it. The owner meets the person who decides and the person who will run the company.

    5. 05

      Monthly review

      Pipeline, conversations, targets and your feedback on each, in one review a month with your decision-maker.

    6. 06

      Toward closing

      We support terms and structure and flag the German points early: share purchase notarization, employee transfer rules, the investment review for non-EU buyers, the works council.

    Each mandate owns a defined lane by sector or geography, so you keep every other channel open while we go deep where those channels do not reach. The model is a monthly retainer credited against a success fee paid on completion. We do not list companies and we do not sell targets to several buyers at once. For how a European acquisition pipeline is run end to end, see our article on building one.

    Your buy-box

    Submit your add-on criteria

    Tell us about the platform and the targets you want next to it, and we will come back with how we would run the search in Germany.

    • A senior advisor reviews your criteria and replies within 48 hours
    • German-speaking origination, owners who have confirmed their intent
    • Retainer credited against the success fee

    Prefer to talk first?

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    Frequently asked questions

    An add-on, also called a bolt-on, is a company acquired by an existing portfolio company (the platform) rather than by the fund directly. The platform integrates it to add customers, regions, capabilities or scale. Across Europe, add-ons make up about two thirds of private equity buyouts by count.

    Most start with databases and the commercial register, which every competitor also uses, and with intermediaries who bring companies already in a process. Proprietary add-ons, bought outside a process at an add-on multiple, come from direct owner-level origination in German, over months, through a counterpart the owner trusts. That is the function FISART provides on a mandate.

    Yes, and increasingly so: 29 percent of family-business successions in Germany go to external buyers (IfM Bonn), and platforms are among the most frequent. Owners prefer a buyer from their own trade who can explain who will run the company and what happens to the people; a platform can do that better than a generalist fund if it leads with the company rather than the price.

    Smaller than most foreign sponsors expect. The German buyout market measured by equity is about a hundred-plus companies a year, and BVK classes a buyout under 15 million euros of equity as small; in 2025 that class accounted for 353 million euros of the 10.66 billion invested in German buyouts (BVK, March 2026). Add-on targets are mostly owner-run companies at or below that line, often with revenue in the low tens of millions of euros, which is also why they rarely appear in deal-value statistics at all.

    Yes, and that is the normal setup. The mandate is scoped to a sector and region, so the platform's team keeps running its own channels while FISART owns the defined lane. The monthly review is where both pipelines are compared and the criteria adjusted.

    Sources

    • 1.PitchBook: Add-on deals remain core strategy in Europe (add-on share of European PE buyouts, add-on count 2024). Link
    • 2.PitchBook: Value of PE add-ons rises in Europe as traditional buyout activity stays muted (2025 add-on value, deal count, share of deal value). Link
    • 3.PitchBook: 2025 DACH Private Capital Breakdown (Germany share of regional PE deal value and count). Link
    • 4.Roland Berger: Private equity DACH, State of the region H1 2026, July 2026 (Preqin data: transaction counts, sectors, funds, dry powder). Link
    • 5.BVK: Der deutsche Beteiligungskapitalmarkt im Jahr 2025, statistics charts, March 2026. Link
    • 6.Eight Advisory, Buy-and-Build Integration whitepaper (Mergermarket data: add-ons per platform Germany versus global, German add-on counts 2015 to 2022, buy-and-build volume, sectors 2022), as reported by Unternehmeredition on 2 May 2023. Link
    • 7.BCG: The Power of Buy and Build, February 2016 (HHL and BCG analysis of 2,372 deals). Link
    • 8.IfM Bonn: Unternehmensnachfolgen in Deutschland 2026 bis 2030, Daten und Fakten Nr. 37, November 2025. Link
    • 9.KfW Research: Nachfolge-Monitoring Mittelstand 2025, Fokus Volkswirtschaft Nr. 526, January 2026. Link

    Figures as of October 2026. Deal counts and equity figures come from different providers with different definitions and are not comparable with each other; each is cited with its source.

    Published: October 31, 2026. Updated: October 31, 2026.

    Byline: Lud Schroedl.

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