The English language is rapidly running out of superlatives to describe the astonishing growth of the private equity industry. In the past year, new records have been set with almost boring regularity. At today's growth rate, the entire European stock market will be owned by private equity sometime around May 2012.

Blackstone is about to close a $13bn fund to set a new, but no doubt temporary, benchmark and the recent $12bn acquisition of Danish telecoms company TDC will probably prove just as ephemeral a record.