What drives Management Buyout activity across Europe?

The European buyout market has been growing rapidly since the early 1980s onwards, and despite a number of periodic downturns, including the one we are currently experiencing, Management Buy-outs and Buy-ins are now a key part of the M&A infrastructure.In recent years, there has been a wealth of research into what drives Private Equity and Venture Capital activity and success, however, little research has been undertaken into how these effects transfer into the buyout market, particularly across Europe. In this paper, I focus on a number of cross-national panel data regressions over a ten year period and analyse a number of economic, financial, technological, regulatory and legal factors that promote or inhibit buyout activity across Europe. I find, for the first time, that there is a link between a country¿s technological, regulatory and ownership environment and buyout activity, and demonstrate that a number of other variables also have an important impact on buyout deals.