The PE Rollup Execution Diagnostic

73% of PE rollups fail to hit their year-three EBITDA targets. The deal thesis survives first contact with reality. The integration infrastructure doesn't. This diagnostic quantifies exactly where your rollup execution will break down before it happens.

The deal thesis in most failed PE rollups was defensible. The market was fragmented. The platform was capable. The acquisition multiples, relative to the exit thesis, made sense on paper.

The gap showed up later, and it showed up in execution.

Our breakdown of why PE buy-and-build strategies fail in execution identified five recurring failure modes. Integration complexity was underestimated before closing. Cultural misalignment went unaddressed in due diligence. Revenue synergies failed to materialise at the modelled rate. Operational integration ran over time and budget. Key talent walked before the value could be captured.

None of these are new observations. The research on rollup failure rates has been consistent for years.

The current data makes the point harder to ignore. McKinsey's Global Private Markets Report 2026 found that the average global holding period for PE-backed companies has reached a historic high of 6.6 years. That figure points to something beyond market timing. More portfolios are sitting on execution problems rather than being cleared on thesis. Roughly 16,000 companies globally are ready to exit but have been held for longer than four years, representing 52 percent of total buyout-backed inventory and the highest share ever recorded.

Revenue synergies are where the execution gap becomes most visible. Bain's M&A research consistently identifies failure to integrate the acquired product portfolio as the single most common reason companies miss their revenue synergy targets. Deal teams model these synergies carefully; they just rarely fund or plan for them with the rigour the model assumes. McKinsey's integration research adds a harder finding: due diligence overlooks as much as 50 percent of potential merger value, and in more than 40 percent of deals, the process fails to produce an adequate roadmap for capturing synergies at all.

What's less common is a tool that helps operators and advisors assess their specific exposure to each failure mode before the next deal closes, or while an integration is already underway.

That's what the diagnostic below is designed to do.

Twelve questions across four dimensions. Each question maps to the execution mechanisms that the research consistently identifies as the difference between rollups that deliver on their thesis and those that don't. A strong score means the foundations are in place. A fragmented score shows where execution risk concentrates before it shows up in quarterly numbers.

Run it before a close. Run it during an integration review. Or use it as a briefing tool with your leadership team. Score it individually, compare answers, and the gaps in the room will tell you more than any strategy presentation.