WH Smith, Vivendi, Computacenter and Saab are among the most attractive companies for private equity firms to take over, according to analysis by Morgan Stanley, which comes as buyout groups look to put $400bn (€325bn) in unspent capital to use after months spent sitting on the sidelines.

The US bank has ranked companies with a market cap of over $500m using five different valuation metrics commonly used by private equity firms to assess the attractiveness of potential acquisition targets.