LPs Push on Key Person Clauses, but Concessions Lag
ILPA's latest survey shows key person provisions are the term LPs challenge most, yet they win concessions barely a third of the time.
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The Exit Is the Blueprint
Private equity firms are redesigning how they approach exits, treating the end of the hold period as a constraint that shapes every decision from day one rathe…
Sponsor-to-Sponsor Exits Dominate the UK but Hit a Decade Low in the US
Sponsors selling to each other made up 62% of UK exits this year. US sponsor-to-sponsor exits hit 94 deals in Q2, the fewest in at least a decade.
Add-Ons Now Make Up 73% of Private Equity Buyouts
Platform deals, the ones that create a new standalone company, have become the rarity. Three of every four U.S. buyouts last year were additions to something a…
GE Is Buying One of Four Jet-Engine Castings Suppliers. Its Rivals Are Building Their Own.
GE Aerospace is paying $11.75 billion for Warburg Pincus-owned CPP. Pratt & Whitney buys from CPP and is already adding its own foundry. Regulators still get a…
PE Is Buying Accounting Firms, and the Profession Is Changing Shape
Grant Thornton's $55-a-share deal for CBIZ is the largest accounting merger in 25 years. Firms across the industry are splitting in two to take private-equity …
Take-Privates Are Back, and EA's $55 Billion Deal Just Proved It
US take-private deal value more than doubled to $242.9 billion in 2025. Electronic Arts' $55 billion buyout, the largest leveraged buyout in history, closed in…
First-Time Funds Are Starving While Mega-Funds Soak Up the Capital
The 10 largest PE funds took nearly 46% of all capital raised in 2025. First-time managers closed a record-low number of funds in the same year.
Insurance Money Now Funds 43% of Credit at the Biggest PE Firms
Apollo proved the model with Athene. KKR, Carlyle, Ares, Brookfield and Blackstone have all copied it. Regulators convened emergency talks on it in May.
Autism Therapy Is the Next Roll-Up Industry Facing a Backlash
Private equity has bought more than 500 autism therapy centers over the past decade. Lawsuits and a new Illinois ownership law are now testing that model. Vet …
Asset-Based Finance Is Pulling Ahead of Direct Lending
Direct lending's share of new LP allocations has dropped from 58% to 44% in two years. Insurance balance sheets are steering the money toward asset-based finan…
GP-Led Secondaries Just Became a Real Fourth Exit Route, Not a Stopgap
Continuation vehicles used to be the move for a fund that couldn't sell. In 2025, sponsors started using them to hold onto their best companies instead.
Power, Not Capital, Is Now the Bottleneck on AI Data Center Deals
Turbine backlogs stretch past 2031 and interconnection queues run 4.5 years. Sponsors are responding by financing power plants directly instead of waiting on t…
Trade Sales Now Absorb 71% of Private Equity Exit Value
The IPO window is still mostly shut. Corporate strategics have become the exit of first resort for aging portfolio companies.
Private Equity Found a Second Liquidity Trick, and It Doesn't Even Require a Sale
Secondaries already hit a record this year. Now sponsors are borrowing directly against portfolio companies through private credit giants like Apollo and Bain.…
DPI Is the Only Number LPs Care About Now, So Some GPs Are Gaming It
Cash back to investors, not marked-up paper gains, has become the metric that decides whether a manager raises its next fund.
401(k) Private Markets Access Is Moving From Policy to Product, But Not Very Fast
The federal government cleared the way for private equity in your 401(k) more than a year ago. The industry still hasn't built the on-ramp.
Private Equity's Exit Problem Looks a Lot Like the Late Stage of a Familiar Cycle
Economist Carlota Perez has spent a career describing how technological revolutions end. Her framework says the game always runs out of chairs. Private equity'…
Vertical Software Just Won the Multiple War With Horizontal SaaS
Buyers are paying up for platforms that own an industry's workflow and data, and pricing generic tools like a commodity, the real fallout from February's SaaSo…
AI Due Diligence Tools Are Compressing PE Deal Timelines to Three Weeks
Contract-AI platforms like Kira and Luminance are cutting due-diligence timelines from six-to-eight weeks to two-to-three weeks, and the real payoff comes afte…