deals

Deals (w/e 12/12/25)

Lee McCabe

15 Dec 2025 — 2 min read

Blackstone Takes Alexander & Baldwin Private in $2.3 Billion Deal

Blackstone is taking Alexander & Baldwin private for $2.3 billion, giving public shareholders a fat premium and relieving a small-cap Hawaiian REIT from the existential boredom of quarterly reporting. A&B owns grocery-anchored retail and industrial boxes across the islands—steady cash flow, zero sizzle, exactly the kind of ballast Blackstone loves when rates wobble and public markets misprice dull assets. This is not a turnaround story; it’s financial engineering with palm trees. Link

Arcline Buys Altronic, LLC

Arcline is picking up Altronic, a maker of industrial ignition and control systems—small, technical, mission-critical gear that keeps heavy equipment alive and regulators off people’s backs. No price disclosed, but the pattern is familiar: find an engineered niche with high switching costs, modernize operations, then tack on every adjacent product line until the business looks too expensive for anyone else to touch. Quiet, disciplined, very Arcline. Link

General Atlantic and CPP Take Minority Stakes in Boats Group

Permira is selling pieces of Boats Group to General Atlantic and CPP, a partial recap that keeps the sponsor in the saddle while bringing in long-duration capital. Boats Group is the digital marketplace for everything that floats—high ticket prices, fragmented dealers, and an industry still discovering the internet. GA and CPP aren’t betting on boat sales; they’re betting on transaction software wrapped around a passion category with surprisingly durable margins. Link

Cinven Takes Majority Stake in Flint Global

Cinven is buying into Flint Global, the regulatory and geopolitical advisory firm that has turned corporate anxiety into a subscription business. It’s not glamorous, but margins are real and demand only rises as governments get louder. Cinven’s move is simple: scale the advisory footprint, formalize offerings, and sell “don’t-get-fined” expertise across continents. The trick, as always, is scaling senior talent without watering down what clients actually pay for. Link

Conditor Equity Invests in NetLaw

Conditor is taking a minority stake in NetLaw, a legal-tech platform that bolts estate-planning tools onto advisors and wealth managers. The business sits in that sweet spot where compliance meets recurring revenue—advisors don’t want to build this stuff, and regulators aren’t getting any friendlier. Conditor’s bet is that distribution, not innovation, is the real unlock: plug NetLaw into big RIA networks and let scale do the rest. Link

News (w/e 1/9/26)

Eir Partners Closes $1 Billion Fund Focused on Healthcare Technology Miami-based Eir Partners closed its third fund at $1 billion, blowing past its $800 million target in just a few months. The raise reinforces a clear LP preference: specialist healthcare investors with repeatable playbooks still get paid attention, even as

Deals (w/e 1/9/26)

Veritas Capital Buys Majority Stake in Global Healthcare ExchangeVeritas Capital is acquiring a majority stake in Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX), the healthcare supply-chain software platform used by hospitals and suppliers across the U.S. GHX sits in the unglamorous but essential plumbing of healthcare, where scale and data matter more

Private equity has quietly entered a new sport: competitive talent hoarding.

Every firm now appears to be stockpiling operators the way children collected Pokémon cards. Operating Partners, Senior Advisors, Venture Partners, EIRs—hand out a title, add them to a slide, declare victory. LPs love the imagery. It signals “capability.” It looks sophisticated. It gives the impression of a tightly coordinated

AI isn’t coming for middle management. It’s already rearranging the job description.

The layer of people whose primary function is aggregating information, writing summaries, building decks, and “managing up” is about to feel the shift first. Not because AI is more insightful than they are, but because it’s cheaper, faster, and doesn’t need three pre-meetings to prepare for the meeting.