PE conferences are broken. Their floor plans tell you quite a lot about the attitude behind them.

“Value creation” gets top billing on the main stage. Operating partners get a separate room, a different floor, sometimes an entirely separate event. The industry has managed to make the people responsible for delivering the investment thesis a fringe attraction. Quite an achievement. And giving operating partners their own conference

AE Industrial lost two partners in one week, both to operating seats.

AE Industrial lost two partners to company jobs. Everyone else was hiring operators. Senior moves at the 200 largest US PE firms, week to 13 October.

The Simple Reason AI Strategies Keep Falling Short

Your portcos are wasting tokens and proliferating amateur decision-making Sponsored by Fine Tune Expense Management By Rich Ham Companies are spending big on AI now, and often for good reasons. The range of potential applications keeps expanding, and every portfolio company seems to have another process somebody believes can

Online art sales hit a six-year low. The expensive lots barely went online.

Online art sales fell to $9.2 billion, their lowest since 2019, while the wider market grew. The price mix explains why.

What Is Revenue Operations (RevOps)? A Plain-English Definition for PE-Backed Companies

RevOps aligns marketing, sales and customer success on one funnel, one data set and one owner. What it is and when a PE portfolio company needs it.

McKinsey says AI-led companies are worth 31 times revenue. The sample is 21.

McKinsey's new report finds a 130 per cent AI premium in private equity. The top tier behind the 31 times revenue headline holds 21 of 471 companies.

Brightline projected eight million riders for 2026. It is on pace for 3.6 million.

Brightline filed Chapter 11 on Thursday, cutting $5.5 billion of debt to $2.7 billion. The bond documents said 3.2 million riders would cover the debt. The railway is carrying 3.6 million and still ended up in court.

Blackstone bought Clarion for £600m in 2017. Informa is paying £2.24bn.

Informa is buying the events group from Blackstone after a shelved auction. The headline gain is 3.7 times, but the published figures do not show what Blackstone put in along the way.

The exit interview says pursuing new opportunities. The truth is shorter.

Most operating partner departures sound the same. After a successful period supporting the portfolio, X has decided to pursue new opportunities. Everyone wishes everyone well. The LinkedIn comments arrive. Congratulations. Exciting next chapter. Well deserved. Nobody mentions the sentence that would make the post useful. Nobody gave me the authority

Coffee is for exits.

First prize is a distribution. Second prize is another year of board meetings. Third prize is explaining to your LPs why you’re launching another fund before returning the last one. There’s a particular joy in watching an industry that sells transformation explain that its exit strategy is waiting

Everyone wants AI deals. The money is in boring adoption.

My 2027 PE prediction is fairly simple. A lot of people will overpay for AI companies. A smaller group will make far more money by forcing boring companies they already own to use AI properly. The first path is exciting. AI-native targets. Huge multiples. Breathless growth. Technical diligence nobody

The dangerous GP question is what happens after close.

If I were an LP right now, I would ask every GP one question they cannot answer with a slide deck. What exactly do you do after you buy it? Not the polite version. Not "talk me through your value creation approach." That invites the usual opera. Operating