There's a paradox sitting at the heart of Australian dealmaking. Foreign private equity keeps buying Australian companies, I-MED, Estia Health, Virtus Health, the list goes on, while Australian superannuation funds are sending an ever-growing share of capital offshore. Both things are happening at the same time. Both make complete sense.
According to PwC's M&A Outlook 2026, inbound deals represented 45% of total deal value in 2025, up from 30% the year prior. The reasons aren't complicated: stable rule of law, a growing population, and assets frequently mispriced relative to global peers. When Bain Capital bought Estia Health for $838 million in 2023 and sold it three years later for $2.5 billion, that's a foreign buyer spotting durable value in an ageing population story the local market had underweighted.
The super side is structural. Australia's superannuation system hit $4.5 trillion, around 160% of GDP, and needs to deploy roughly $40 billion every quarter. The ASX can't absorb that. Super funds already own 38% of listed shares, the exchange is shrinking, and IT stocks are just 5% of the ASX 200 versus 20% globally. AustralianSuper's CEO put it plainly: "We are too big for Australia." International allocations crossed 50% for the first time in 2025.
The loop is self-reinforcing: foreign capital buys Australian assets, takes them private, exits at a premium, rarely back to the ASX. Super funds watch those assets disappear from the listed market and send more capital offshore instead. It's not a conspiracy, it's just incentives. But for a country sitting on one of the largest pools of retirement savings in the world, it's worth asking whether Australian capital should be working harder to keep Australian assets in Australian hands.
