For the private equity industry, the Coronavirus pandemic breeds opportunity. Over the past few years, private equity has faced a counterintuitive problem: Investors have flooded private equity firms with rivers of cash, but fund managers have struggled to find opportunities to put this capital to use. As a result, the amount of dry powder these firms have on hand is staggering. As of late 2019, private equity firms had a whopping $2.3 trillion in dry powder. But the pandemic, as horrible as it is for both the country and the world, offers private equity firms opportunities to use this stored powder to ignite investment opportunities. Why have so much powder in storage? Well, fund managers have pointed to two critical concerns: (1) Company valuations were overvalued in a crowded M&A market, and (2) the frothy economic boom was nearing a peak, with a recession to follow.