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Private equity firms that raised funds in 2025 charged the lowest average management fee rates ever recorded, continuing a multiyear downward trend.
Buyout funds of last year’s vintage asked investors to pay a mean rate of 1.61% of assets, according to data through June from Preqin, published in a December report. That’s well below the legacy 2% management fee that the industry has been known for since its inception.
There are a few reasons for this trend toward fee compression – and they’re not all dire. Of course, the industry has experienced a difficult few years of fundraising, requiring many managers to offer fee discounts to secure commitments. Even still, the industry raised $507 billion in aggregate capital across 856 funds during the first three quarters of 2025, which is expected to be essentially the same amount as 2024, when the final quarter of the year is tallied, according to Preqin.
In response to a difficult fundraising environment, managers have been consolidating and capital is increasingly going toward the biggest funds. Nearly 46% of the capital raised in 2025 was done so by the 10 largest funds, up from 34.5% in 2024, according to PitchBook.
