M&A jumped from the lowest-ranked PE value creation lever to the highest in twelve months.
That is the single biggest move in FTI’s 2026 Private Equity Value Creation Index, a survey of 555 senior PE leaders. The respondent group naming M&A their top lever climbed from 7% to 24% year over year.
The lever sponsors now rank first is also the one they execute worst.
Only 25% of firms see results inside 12 months.
Just 35% call their integration efficient, the lowest score of any lever in the survey. Synergies are failing more often than not (and time to value is a core reason).
The top 40% of performers do four things differently.
1. They run a defined 100-day plan from day one.
2. They appoint a named integration owner who sits apart from the operating CEO.
3. They track realized synergies against the model every month.
4. They keep a playbook that gets faster with each deal.
The operational playbook is a common practice among fast-velocity startups – and a key differentiation when going against enterprise players.
If you run a platform in the $50M to $250M range, the binding constraint on your next add-on is not finding a target, but whether your platform can absorb one.
The acquirer’s readiness gets almost no diligence, and that is backward, because that is where the value leaks.
Full breakdown + exercises in this week’s Growth Shuttle Insider below.
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M&A is Now the Top-Ranked PE Value Creation Lever For 2026
Mario Peshev
