NVPE Editorial - Not Very Private Equity (Page 4)

Deals

Warburg bought a foundry for $459 million. Its customer just paid $11.75 billion.

GE Aerospace bought castings from CPP for fifteen years. It just paid 26 times EBITDA to stop. Warburg reportedly paid $459 million in 2011.

The Do-Nothing Baseline: what a portfolio company would have been worth if its sponsor had simply held it

The Do-Nothing Baseline: How to Tell Whether a Value Creation Team Actually Created Value

The Do-Nothing Baseline is what a portfolio company would have been worth if its sponsor had bought it and simply held it. Four subtractions, one residual, and why the residual is usually smaller than the deck says and larger than zero.

The PE firms with the best in-house value creation teams, grouped by operating model

The PE Firms With the Best In-House Value Creation Teams (2026)

Sponsors staff operating capability three ways: an in-house portfolio operations group on the management fee, a bench of operating partners paid from deal economics, or external firms rented per situation.

What is a management incentive plan (MIP) in private equity: how sweet equity pays

What Is a Management Incentive Plan (MIP) in Private Equity? How Sweet Equity Actually Pays

A management incentive plan is the equity a sponsor grants management at investment. What it pays, when it pays, and why so many plans written for a four-year exit are worth nothing at year eight.

Deals

Warburg already sold McGill and Partners once. To itself.

EQT is paying $2 billion for the specialty broker Warburg seeded in 2019. The more interesting sale happened in December 2024, and the buyer was Warburg.

DPI in private equity: distributions to paid-in capital, explained with a worked example

Value Creation

What Is DPI in Private Equity? Distributions to Paid-In Capital, Explained

DPI is the private equity return metric that counts only the cash investors have actually received. The formula, a worked example, what a good DPI looks like by fund age, and how it compares with IRR, TVPI and RVPI.

Deals

CVC said Glendower would keep its name. The name went. The fund hit $10 billion.

CVC bought a secondaries firm managing $8 billion in 2021 and promised it would keep its name. Five years on, one fund alone is $10 billion, and the name is nowhere in the press release.