Miura Partners attended IPEM Paris 2026, connecting with international LPs and with managers from across European private markets over the course of the week. Those conversations gave a useful reading of where the industry stands: investors are more selective, attention has returned to how returns are actually produced, and there is a clear premium on managers able to show change at company level. For a mid-market firm working with family-owned businesses in Southern Europe, those are familiar terms of reference.

It shows most clearly in the questions being asked. For much of the last cycle the central debate was about timing and positioning — when to buy, when to sell, what the market would do next. In Paris the conversation had moved on, to who can make a business measurably better, over what period and on what evidence. It is a demanding standard, and a constructive one for managers whose work has always been done inside the company.

Five points summarise what the team brought back:

1. Spain has moved from anecdote to agenda item for international LPs

Several international LPs — family offices, funds of funds and pension funds — are actively mapping private equity managers in Spain, and in those meetings, Miura came up top of mind. The recurring argument was structural rather than tactical: Spain’s high concentration of SMEs is read as an advantage for small- and mid-cap managers, offering a deeper and more fragmented pipeline than larger, more consolidated markets.

2. Macro is no longer a plan. Manager selection is

Current rate levels are broadly in line with, or even below, pre-2010 norms, and the prevailing view was that forecasting where they land is not the exercise. With too many unpredictable variables in play — AI, US policy, geopolitics — LPs are testing managers directly instead: company-level sensitivity analysis, and a tangible action plan if things go sour. The same scrutiny applies to specialisation. Every manager now claims it, and the follow-up question decides it: within a stated vertical, which sub-segment, which in-house experts, and how they concretely help a company scale or internationalise.

3. Value creation has inverted

For most of the last cycle a meaningful part of the return came from the capital markets rather than from the company: debt amortised over the hold and exit multiples above entry. That source has largely closed, and the balance has shifted towards revenue growth and operational improvement — value that has to be produced inside the business rather than collected on the way out.

The consequence sits in the underwriting. Growth that was comfortable whilst multiples were rising is no longer sufficient on its own, so the question moves to the company and its management: whether they can deliver the plan without help from the valuation. Front-loading investment in the first years of the hold is the practical answer — closing management and talent gaps, the right CFO, digitalisation — accepted as a cost against a case that has no arbitrage to fall back on.

4. The mid-market is where execution still moves the needle

Large cap is underdelivering relative to mid-cap, for structural reasons: less ability to drive rapid change, fewer opportunities to overhaul management and organisation, a narrower universe of potential buyers, and competition concentrated among a small number of mega-funds. Absolute returns have not declined, but dispersion has widened, and reaching the upper quartile is now a question of manager selection rather than exposure. Concentration reinforces the point: last year 10 funds raised 50% of all capital committed.

5. AI changes the workflow, not just the business

The framing was operational rather than thematic: the opportunity is to change how the industry works, not only to modernise portfolio companies. Two conditions were attached. Investment goes to people as much as to technology, with AI deployed to enable talent rather than replace it; and reliability remains the constraint, with hallucinations still a real problem. The bar is output accelerated without accuracy given up.

Luis Seguí, Founding Partner & CEO at Miura:

“Fifteen years ago, explaining the Spanish mid-market to an international investor meant explaining Spain first. That is no longer the conversation. What used to be a diversification decision has become a selection decision — which manager, which segment, which operating plan — and that suits a market of family-owned businesses, where the return was always going to come from building rather than repricing.”

Begoña Aguilera, Head of Investor Relations & Capital Raising at Miura:

“Selection is doing more work than exposure, and what draws an investor in is not the pitch but the record: what was said, and what was done since. That gets built meeting by meeting, with investors we have known for years and with those we have just met.”