The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that private equity firms will face additional pressure to sell assets and return capital to investors after two years of sluggish dealmaking, according to a senior executive at Evercore Inc. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that the global value of mergers and acquisitions and related transactions fell below $3-trillion (U.S.) last year for the first time since 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Private equity funds were less active as a sharp rise in interest rates made financing deals more expensive and raised the odds of a recession. Many private equity owners have chosen to hold assets for longer, rather than exit at what they perceive as a depressed price, says Andrew MacNiven, Evercore's head of Canada. The silver lining is that companies in many industries "are well positioned to buy" and credit markets have suddenly improved, with bond yields falling during the late-2023 bond rally. There were only two private-equity-led deals with values of more than $10-billion (U.S.) involving Canadian firms last year -- the largest of which was Brookfield Infrastructure's acquisition of Triton International, an owner and lessor of intermodal containers.