Deal counts are US buyout-type transactions (buyout, add-on, public-to-private, secondary buyout, corporate carve-out, sale to management) from Preqin. 2026 is excluded as a partial year. Bar labels give the share of all 1990–2025 US buyout-type deals that fall inside each paper's sample window; French, Swedish and German samples are plotted against US deal flow to compare eras, not markets. Hover a bar to shade its window.