Connect with us

Technology

Acceleration of the PE cycle will be key for growth, highlights Dechert report

Published

on

The 2025 Global Private Equity Outlook provides dealmakers with key insights as they look to raise funds, deploy capital, and get back to the deal table over the next twelve months.

60% of respondents globally now offer a co-investment programme. 93% of respondents are at least somewhat likely to consider take-private deals in the next 12 months.  82% of respondents expect secondaries activity levels to remain buoyant or increase in the next two years following 4x growth in the past five years.

LONDON, Nov. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Dechert LLP, in partnership with Mergermarket, has today announced the release of their 7th annual Global Private Equity Outlook, a comprehensive report into the state of the private equity (PE) market today, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the industry in 2025.

Overall activity points to a genuine resilience in the PE sector in 2024, despite an increasingly volatile environment, including two years of increased borrowing costs following more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates as well as geopolitical volatility, economic turmoil and industry upheaval.

In volume terms, the first three quarters of 2024 saw 6,792 buyout transactions worldwide, representing just a 1% decrease on the same period in 2023. In value terms, meanwhile, 2024 looks much healthier than 2023 with buyout deals worth $703 billion worldwide in the first three quarters of the year, up 47% on 2023.

“This year’s report highlights the evolving state of the private equity industry. Whilst we have not seen a return to the levels of activity seen in 2021 and early 2022, dealmaking is robust when compared with the pre-pandemic years,” said Chris Field, co-head of Dechert’s private equity practice. “Improving sentiment and reduced uncertainty have laid the foundations for what should be an even stronger 2025.”

Based on responses from senior executives across 100 global PE firms, the key findings from this year’s Global Private Equity Outlook include: 

60% of respondents globally now offer a co-investment programme.93% of respondents are at least somewhat likely to consider take-private deals in the next 12 months.  82% of respondents expect secondaries activity levels to remain buoyant or increase in the next two years following 4x growth in the past five years.34% of global respondents are exploring GP-stake divestitures in the next two years.

The report also highlights a number of challenges for firms to overcome. This includes increasing regulation, with 66% of PE firms globally expecting increased scrutiny from antitrust, FDI and other regulatory authorities to have a negative impact on their dealmaking plans over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, over a quarter (27%) of respondents expect relatively weak economic growth to have the biggest impact on the deal environment over the next 12-18 months, while almost half (46%) cite geopolitical conflict as one of the three biggest impacts on the market over the near term.   

Focusing on EMEA, dealmaking has remained consistent, with deal value continuing to increase. Deals in the first three quarters of the year were worth a total of $203.7 billion, up from $119.0 billion over the same period in 2023. What’s more, exit activity is also starting to rise. “The U.S. market has been quicker to recover thus far, with the European market slightly behind. However, with rates falling and models improving, we can now follow the pick-up over the coming months.” Global Managing Partner, Sabina Comis, said.

“The system has been clogged,” adds Field. “Exits haven’t been happening as often because sellers were wanting prices that were too high to work for buyers when they put the numbers into their models; now that rates are reducing, the models start to look better, and the cycle begins to spin again.”

To read the 2025 Global Private Equity Outlook in full, please click here.

Methodology
In July 2024, Mergermarket, on behalf of Dechert LLP, surveyed 100 senior-level executives at PE firms based in North America (45%), EMEA (35%), and Asia-Pacific (20%). In order to qualify for inclusion, the firms all needed to have US$1bn or more in assets under management (AUM) and respondents could not be first-time fund managers.

The survey included a combination of qualitative and quantitative questions, and all interviews were conducted over the telephone by appointment. Results were analysed and collated by Mergermarket, and all responses are anonymised and presented in aggregate.

About Dechert
Dechert is a global law firm that advises asset managers, financial institutions and corporations on issues critical to managing their business and their capital – from high-stakes litigation to complex transactions and regulatory matters. We answer questions that seem unsolvable, develop deal structures that are new to the market and protect clients’ rights in extreme situations. Our nearly 1,000 lawyers across 20 offices globally focus on the financial services, private equity, private credit, real estate, life sciences and technology sectors. 

About Dechert’s Global Private Equity Practice
Dechert has been at the forefront of advising private equity firms for almost 40 years. With more than 300 private equity and private investment clients, we have unique insights into how the industry has evolved and where it’s going next. Our globally integrated team of more than 350 private equity lawyers advises private equity, private credit and other alternative asset managers on flexible solutions at every phase of the investment life cycle.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/acceleration-of-the-pe-cycle-will-be-key-for-growth-highlights-dechert-report-302302486.html

Continue Reading

Technology

NUHS, SINGTEL AND ERICSSON EXPAND PARTNERSHIP TO ADVANCE NEXT-GENERATION CONNECTED HEALTHCARE

Published

on

By

Extended collaboration will accelerate research and development in advanced connectivity and emerging 5G Advanced & future 6G technologies for Healthcare of the Future.

SINGAPORE, Nov. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The National University Health System (NUHS), Singtel and Ericsson today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), reinforcing their commitment to a strategic partnership to advance connected healthcare, 5G-Advanced and 6G technology, as well as connected intelligence.

The collaboration will focus on research and development, harnessing successive generations of telecommunications and artificial intelligence technology to deliver deployable healthcare applications. NUHS will provide clinical, academic and research leadership; Ericsson will contribute expertise in mobile network technologies, network architecture and future 6G research; and Singtel will contribute expertise in advanced network deployment and services.

As part of the collaboration, Singtel and Ericsson will be founding partners of NUHS’ newly established National University XG AI Centre (NXAC), which will serve as a platform for developing and translating network-enabled healthcare applications.

NXAC will bring together healthcare, telecommunications and technology expertise. The name “XG” reflects the Centre’s longer-term ambition to span successive generations of network technology, from 5G today towards 6G and beyond.

NXAC will be the world’s first 6G AI centre dedicated to healthcare, as well as Singapore’s first translational research and development centre, which aims to serve the global healthcare community. It will provide a platform for industry experts and healthcare professionals to co-develop and validate applications using next-generation network infrastructure and AI technologies.

Professor Yeoh Khay Guan, Chief Executive, NUHS, said: “Our interest in advanced networks and AI lies in what they can do for our patients across our 14 entities, and the healthcare professionals who care for them. By bringing together clinical and industry expertise, we hope to harness future generations of telecommunications technology into practical healthcare applications. These range from autonomous mobile robots supporting hospital logistics and patient care, to connected mobile devices that extend care into the home, AI-enabled intelligent fabric for the healthcare industry, and human augmentation for advanced surgeries.”

Growing R&D capabilities as a testbed for healthcare solutions

NXAC will support the translation of emerging technologies from research into real-world healthcare use. As a testbed, it will enable its team and industry partners to work alongside clinicians, nurses and operations teams to develop and evaluate technologies in a working hospital environment.

The collaboration will grow capabilities at the intersection of healthcare, telecommunications, AI and robotics. This will include joint training programmes, fellowships, internships and clinician-engineer collaborations, bringing healthcare and technology expertise closer. Additionally, the partners intend to jointly pursue public research and innovation funding, including the establishment of a corporate laboratory or equivalent industry-public research programme hosted by NUHS and undertaken through NXAC.

Mr Ng Tian Chong, Chief Executive Officer, Singtel Singapore, said: “As Singapore prepares for a rapidly ageing population and increasingly complex healthcare needs, we have an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how care is delivered with technology. Singtel is proud to bring our advanced network and digital capabilities to help realise NUHS’ vision of an intelligent, trusted and borderless healthcare system – one that empowers healthcare professionals and enables more Singaporeans to live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives.”

Mr Daniel Ode, Head of Ericsson Singapore, Brunei and Philippines and Global Customer Unit Singtel, said: “Next-generation healthcare applications such as robotic surgery, holomedicine, and remote monitoring demand deterministic network performance that cannot be compromised. Through NXAC, Ericsson is proud to partner with Singtel and NUHS, contributing our global R&D and advanced network capabilities to translate innovation into clinical practice. By elevating clinical care standards and augmenting frontline clinical teams, we are further reinforcing Singapore’s global leadership as the benchmark for the AI-native hospital.”

Driving better outcomes for patients and hospitals

Through NXAC, NUHS aims to enable a future for proactive, personalised and continuous care, extending from the hospital into patients’ homes and communities. Connected wearables could support continuous monitoring and preventive care beyond the hospital, while ambient AI and contactless sensing could help care teams better understand patients’ conditions and identify potential risks.

Within hospitals, autonomous robotics could support logistics, medication delivery and patient support, while spatial intelligence and smarter facilities could improve the way hospitals manage their people, assets and infrastructure. Extended-reality technologies could also support robot-assisted surgery, holographic guidance, clinical training and remote specialist collaboration.

Together, these capabilities point towards a healthcare environment where technology works increasingly in the background to support clinical teams, make hospital operations more responsive, and maintain continuity of care across different settings.

Key innovation initiatives supported by next-gen connectivity

NXAC plans to spearhead initiatives built on the potential of emerging technologies, first supported by 5G and 5G-Advanced capabilities, with the programme designed to evolve towards early 6G.

Areas of development include:

Ambient AI healthcare: Supporting clinical workflows, contactless monitoring and earlier risk detection.Spatial intelligence and sensing: Developing real-time location and sensing capabilities to improve visibility of people, assets and hospital activities.Simulation-to-real-world development: Training and testing physical and AI-enabled systems in simulated hospital environments before real-world deployment.Autonomous healthcare facilities: Using AI, digital twins and predictive technologies to improve facilities management, reliability and sustainability.Connected devices and wearables: Connecting medical devices and wearables to support hospital operations and care beyond the hospital, including hospital-at-home and remote rehabilitation.Autonomous medical robotics: Exploring the use of autonomous robots for hospital logistics, medication delivery and patient support.Medical extended reality: Advancing applications for clinical education, remote specialist collaboration and surgical support.

Note to editors

The NUHS-Singtel-Ericsson MOU builds on five years of collaboration between them in exploring advanced connectivity for healthcare. Beginning with 5G infrastructure in 2021, the partnership expanded to the deployment of an indoor 5G network at NUH in 2022, covering 10 operating theatres and three inpatient wards when fully commissioned in November 2023.

In February this year, NUHS also formed a strategic partnership with the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) GSMA Foundry, under which NUHS serves as the first global healthcare sandbox for the telecommunications industry. NXAC will serve as the global healthcare test-bed sandbox for over-the-horizon technology, that may be co-developed and validated here in NUHS.

Key terms

National University XG AI Centre (NXAC)

A translational R&D centre and testbed for developing and evaluating network-enabled healthcare applications.

XG

A reference to successive generations of network technology, from 5G today towards 6G and beyond.

5G-Advanced

The evolving generation of 5G capabilities that will support the programme before it progresses towards early 6G.

Connected healthcare

Healthcare applications enabled by connectivity linking devices, systems, care teams and settings.

Ambient AI healthcare

Applications supporting clinical workflows, contactless monitoring and earlier risk detection.

Spatial intelligence and sensing

Real-time location and sensing capabilities to improve visibility of people, assets and hospital activities.

Medical extended reality

Applications supporting clinical education, remote specialist collaboration and surgical support.

About the National University Health System (NUHS)­

The National University Health System (NUHS) aims to transform how illness is prevented and managed by discovering causes of disease, development of more effective treatments through collaborative multidisciplinary research and clinical trials, and creation of better technologies and care delivery systems in partnership with others who share the same values and vision.

Institutions in the NUHS Group include the National University Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Jurong Community Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and the upcoming Tengah General and Community Hospital; three National Specialty Centres – National University Cancer Institute, Singapore (NCIS), National University Heart Centre, Singapore (NUHCS) and National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore (NUCOHS); the National University Polyclinics (NUP); Jurong Medical Centre; and three NUS health sciences schools – NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (including the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies), NUS Faculty of Dentistry and NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

With member institutions under a common governance structure, NUHS creates synergies for the advancement of health by integrating patient care, health science education and biomedical research. As a Regional Health System, NUHS works closely with health and social care partners across Singapore to develop and implement programmes that contribute to a healthy and engaged population in the Western part of Singapore.

For more information, please visit www.nuhs.edu.sg.

About Singtel Group

Singtel Group is a leading Asia-based connectivity, digital infrastructure and services company with businesses and strategic investments globally that serve consumers, enterprises and governments.

The Group’s telecoms businesses include Singtel Singapore, Optus and regional associates Airtel, AIS, Globe and Telkomsel. Together, they give Singtel a significant footprint across Asia, Australia and Africa, reaching over 839 million mobile customers in 20 countries.

Its digital infrastructure business includes regional data centre arm, Nxera, and a joint investment with KKR in STTGDC. Digital services arm, NCS, complements this infrastructure with enterprise technology and AI solutions, while sovereign AI cloud RE:AI brings together Singtel’s AI capabilities. 

As it powers the digital and AI economy, Singtel is dedicated to driving innovation and transformation to create new and exciting customer experiences, support enterprises in their digital transformation and shape a more sustainable, digital future.

About Ericsson

Ericsson’s high-performing, programmable networks provide connectivity for billions of people every day. For 150 years, we’ve been pioneers in creating technology for communication. We offer mobile communication and connectivity solutions for service providers and enterprises. Together with our customers and partners, we make the digital world of tomorrow a reality.

www.ericsson.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nuhs-singtel-and-ericsson-expand-partnership-to-advance-next-generation-connected-healthcare-302929007.html

SOURCE National University Health System (NUHS)

Continue Reading

Technology

BIT Group and Techtanium Sign MOU to Advance Tokenized Assets and Institutional Digital Finance

Published

on

By

The strategic partnership pairs Techtanium’s Digital Finance OS (DFOS) and banking technology with BIT Group’s on-chain financial infrastructure to establish a pathway connecting existing financial systems with tokenized assets and institutional liquidity.

SINGAPORE, Nov. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — BIT Group, a digital asset financial infrastructure group, and Techtanium, a Singapore-based global fintech company, signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to explore new opportunities for banks and financial institutions in tokenized finance. The MOU was signed by Eva Meng, Head of Matrixdock, on behalf of BIT Group, and Dai Ke, CEO of Techtanium.

By combining BIT Group’s tokenization, institutional custody and liquidity infrastructure with Techtanium’s digital finance platform and banking capabilities, the partnership aims to help banks access new asset classes, develop innovative financial products and explore new business models while building on their existing banking infrastructure.

Bridging banking infrastructure and on-chain financial services

As financial institutions explore tokenized assets and digital finance, the requirements extend beyond issuing digital assets. Institutions must also consider how these assets are safeguarded, managed, traded, and financed throughout their lifecycle while operating within institutional-grade standards for compliance, risk management, governance, security, and operational oversight.

The partnership brings together the complementary strengths of BIT Group and Techtanium:

Techtanium – Digital Finance Platform

Techtanium brings its Digital Finance OS (DFOS), a unified and modular platform designed to support banks’ evolution from traditional banking to next-generation digital finance. Combining Unified Core, Super Gateway, tokenization and end-to-end business orchestration capabilities, DFOS enables banks to develop, distribute and operate financial products and services across traditional and tokenized finance.

Beyond connectivity, the platform supports the underlying banking processes, including accounts, payments, settlement and ongoing operations, while enabling access to emerging digital asset ecosystems. This helps financial institutions expand their product portfolios, develop new customer offerings and explore new business models built on their established banking capabilities.

BIT Group – On-Chain Financial Infrastructure

BIT Group brings an established digital asset financial infrastructure ecosystem spanning asset tokenization, institutional custody, trading, liquidity, financing, and asset management. These capabilities are underpinned by BIT Group’s experience serving institutional clients, alongside its compliance, risk management, and operational frameworks. Within the BIT Group ecosystem, two specialized businesses contribute directly to the partnership:

Matrixdock, BIT’s real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform established in 2023, brings proven experience in asset tokenization, reserve management, and on-chain settlement. Matrixdock’s institutional-grade offerings include tokenized gold (XAUm), tokenized silver (XAGm), and tokenized short-term U.S. Treasuries (STBT), supported by transparent and verifiable structures. Its precious metal products are further differentiated by established custody infrastructure in Asia and physical redemption capabilities. Availability is subject to applicable eligibility and jurisdictional restrictions.Cactus Custody, BIT Group’s institutional digital asset custody business, provides institutional custody infrastructure, multi-party computation (MPC) and off-exchange settlement solutions. Relevant BIT Group entities hold a Hong Kong TCSP licence and membership in the VQF Self-Regulatory Organization in Switzerland.

Developing institutional solutions and market opportunities

The partnership aims to help banks expand their financial offerings, from accessing tokenized assets and institutional liquidity to exploring bank-issued products, such as tokenized deposits. These opportunities could enable new services and business models while building on existing banking infrastructure, without necessarily replacing core systems, and maintaining banking-grade controls for compliance, risk management, security and operational controls.

Under the MOU, BIT Group and Techtanium intend to collaborate on joint go-to-market initiatives, solution development, and engagement with banks and financial institutions. Initial work will focus on identifying practical use cases and evaluating integration approaches. Specific initiatives and commercial arrangements will be agreed as the collaboration progresses.

Leadership perspectives

Dai Ke, CEO of Techtanium, said: “Tokenized finance is not simply about introducing new asset classes; it is about integrating digital assets and services into the way banks operate and serve customers. With our unified digital finance platform, banks can build on their existing capabilities and connect more easily with tokenization and institutional custody ecosystems, without necessarily replacing their core systems. Together with BIT Group, we aim to help banks pursue these opportunities and develop new business models that could shape the future of financial services.”

John Ge, Co-Founder and CEO of BIT Group, said: “Bringing traditional financial assets on-chain is just the beginning. For tokenized assets to operate at an institutional level, assets must also be securely held, actively managed, and supported by the infrastructure for trading, liquidity, and utility. BIT Group brings together these capabilities across the digital asset lifecycle. Through our partnership with Techtanium, we aim to connect this infrastructure with established banking systems and jointly develop new opportunities for financial institutions.”

About BIT Group

Founded in 2019, BIT (formerly Matrixport) is an integrity-driven global digital asset financial services group. Headquartered in Singapore with offices across seven countries and regions worldwide, the Group bridges traditional finance and digital asset markets through robust governance, advanced technological capabilities, and compliant operations. BIT provides institutional and professional investors worldwide with a comprehensive suite of digital asset services, spanning trading, custody, asset management, liquidity, and financing solutions, while facilitating the onboarding and adoption of Real World Assets (RWAs). Its entities hold licenses, registrations and other regulatory statuses across Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Bhutan, subject to the scope of each applicable permission—including a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license in Singapore and FINMA authorisation as a manager of collective assets in Switzerland.

Website: https://www.bit.com/

About Techtanium

Techtanium is a Singapore-headquartered global fintech company advancing next-generation digital finance. Building on its holding group’s more than 40 years of banking technology expertise, Techtanium delivers its Digital Finance OS (DFOS), including Unified Core and Super Gateway, alongside solutions spanning core banking, lending, payments and other digital banking services. Its unified and modular approach helps financial institutions modernize existing operations, connect with emerging digital asset ecosystems and pursue new financial products and business models. Techtanium is also developing AI-powered financial services and agentic commerce, including agent-to-agent interaction, orchestration and transaction capabilities, to support new forms of AI-driven commerce. Techtanium has offices in Singapore, Dubai, Oman, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Shenzhen.

Website: https://www.techtanium.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/bit-group-and-techtanium-sign-mou-to-advance-tokenized-assets-and-institutional-digital-finance-302927662.html

SOURCE BIT Group

Continue Reading

Technology

IgniteTech Brings AI That Fixes, Tests and Ships Around the Clock to Enterprise Software

Published

on

By

Not an AI assistant. AI that takes the bug report, fixes it, tests it, ships it and tells the customer it is done, inside guardrails built on decades of software experience.

LONDON, Nov. 4, 2026 /CNW/ — IgniteTech, the AI-first enterprise software company, today detailed how it is bringing AI-run software development to enterprise customers, changing the relationship people have with their software. AI does not just assist developers. Working around the clock, it takes a customer’s bug report, finds and fixes the cause, tests the fix, deploys the update and tells the customer it is done, all automatically and within guardrails the company has spent years building. CEO Eric Vaughan will present it today at the Financial Times Future of AI Summit in London.

“When software breaks, you wait,” said Vaughan, who also leads Khoros and GFI Software. “You report the problem, and you are told it is in the backlog, the line of fixes waiting their turn. Backlog is a word this industry invented as a defense. This is the new age of software. If you report something broken today, it should be fixed by tomorrow morning.”

Khoros will bring this approach to its Aurora AI and Iris® AI platforms first, so community and social media customers can report a problem or ask for a feature and see it built into the shared product.

Every step is checked. Before writing a fix, the system interviews the person who reported the problem until it understands it, then reproduces the problem itself. A fix goes live only after passing automated tests, and the system then repeats the customer’s original steps on the live product to confirm it works before notifying them that the issue has been resolved. Feature requests follow the same path.

Two internal IgniteTech systems, used daily by dozens of employees, already fix and improve themselves this way: KnowledgeWell, an internal knowledge base, and Anvil, an account management system for one of the company’s largest product programs.

Vaughan, a software developer by background, wrote both systems himself in under two months, on purpose. “You cannot hand a change this size to an organization as a slide deck,” he said. “I needed to set the table: prove it in real production software, then build the harness that makes it repeatable. It is not my project anymore. It is how we build.”

In early September, Vaughan spent four days on a Texas jury with his phone off. While he was out, Anvil kept fixing and improving itself, shipping four releases and seventeen changes requested by five colleagues.

That harness is what IgniteTech is taking across its portfolio. The obvious question is what keeps software that builds itself from drifting away from what it was meant to do. IgniteTech’s answer is guardrails. Every product has a clear blueprint of its purpose and where it is headed, and every request is checked against that blueprint before anything is built. Requests that fit become features for every customer, and those that don’t fit go to a person to decide. Each product stays one product for every customer, with no custom versions to maintain. People still control logins and access, payments, deleting data and anything sent outside the company.

“The guardrails are the product,” said Vaughan. “Anyone can let AI write code. The hard part is the harness that decides what gets built, proves it works and keeps the product true to what it is for. We spent nearly four years building it on top of decades of building enterprise software the hard way.”

“People have experienced software the same way for decades: roadmaps measured in quarters and bugs that age in a backlog,” said Vaughan. “Anthropic and OpenAI have shown that AI can write most of their own code. We are bringing that to enterprise software, where customers feel it: software that works around the clock, fixes the reason a bug happened and not just the bug, and builds what you ask for. Five years from now, maybe sooner, people will expect all software to behave this way. We are at the front of it.”

IgniteTech says the approach is still in the early phase. It does not always build a feature the way the requester intended, and it makes mistakes. “So do people,” said Vaughan. “The difference is that this gets better every week.”

About IgniteTech

IgniteTech is a global, build-to-customer, AI-first enterprise software company helping organizations grow revenue, optimize expenses and transform through advanced, AI-driven solutions. Backed by over 30 years of experience in mission-critical software, IgniteTech has built a track record of successful company and technology acquisitions driven by rapid innovation. Since retooling the company in 2023 to become an AI-First innovation organization, IgniteTech has created three brand new, patent-pending, AI-powered innovations, Eloquens® AI, MyPersonas® and Adminio™ AI, along with AI capabilities across its entire portfolio of products.

Media Contacts
For Media Inquiries: media@ignitetech.com
For Business Inquiries: software@ignitetech.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ignitetech-brings-ai-that-fixes-tests-and-ships-around-the-clock-to-enterprise-software-302928438.html

SOURCE Ignite Enterprise Software Solutions, LLC

Continue Reading

Trending