There has rarely been a better time to do a large buyout. Private equity firms have record amounts of capital ready to deploy and plenty of cheap debt is available. But there have not been any leveraged buyouts worth more than $5 billion in Europe so far in 2015. There have only been three since 2008.

That is in sharp contrast to a buoyant mergers and acquisitions market that has seen 22 European deals valued at more than $5 billion this year, totalling almost $400 billion, the highest value since 2007.