news

News (w/e 2/13/26)

Lee McCabe

16 Feb 2026 — 1 min read

Garden City Equity Raises $255 Million Without Institutional LPs

Garden City Equity raised $255 million from operators, athletes, and entertainers and skipped institutional LPs entirely. That is either genius long-duration capital with zero pacing pressure or a reminder that everyone now wants to cosplay as Berkshire Hathaway without the 40-year track record. Link

Schroders and Apollo Push Private Markets Into Wealth Accounts

Schroders and Apollo are teaming up to push private markets deeper into wealth and retirement products. Translation: the industry needs new fee pools, and retail capital is the next frontier, whether it fully understands illiquidity or not. Link

Vision Ridge Closes $2.4 Billion Sustainable Asset Fund

Vision Ridge pulled in $2.4 billion for its latest sustainable asset fund, nearly doubling its prior vehicle. ESG may be politically noisy, but pensions still want cash-flowing infrastructure with a moral narrative attached. Link

McKinsey Transfers $20 Billion Alternative Arm to Neuberger Berman

McKinsey handed control of its $20 billion investment arm, MIO Partners, to Neuberger Berman after years of conflict-of-interest scrutiny. When even consultants decide asset management is reputationally messy, you know the regulatory microscope is only getting sharper. Link

Secondaries Market Consolidation Keeps Accelerating

The aftershocks from EQT’s acquisition of Coller Capital are still rippling through the secondaries market this week. Liquidity is now its own asset class, and if exits stay slow, secondaries shops may end up owning more of private equity than the buyout funds themselves. Link

Lifestyle (w/e 2/19/26)

Vox on the rise of “admin nights” — friends hanging out while doing life chores (budgeting, emails, meal prep), i.e., the new nightlife for people with calendars and back-to-back calls. link Reuters on “sober raves” taking off with Gen Z — earlier nights, no hangovers, still a proper dance floor. link

News (2/19/26)

McKinsey Declares “The Fog Has Lifted” on Private Equity McKinsey’s 2026 Global Private Markets Report says the fog has finally lifted, with buyouts up, exits rebounding, and IPOs creeping back after three flat years. That may be true, but the backlog of PE-owned companies is at record highs and

Deals (w/e 2/19/26)

Ariel Alternatives Acquires Front Line Power Construction Ariel Alternatives has acquired Front Line Power Construction, with Cherokee Nation Businesses joining as a minority co-investor. Power grid infrastructure is no longer theoretical. It’s cables, substations, and hard backlog tied to AI data centers and electrification mandates. This isn’t energy-transition

Capital doesn’t scale businesses. It scales whatever dysfunction is already there.

You see this constantly in home services and other PE-backed, multi-location businesses. New locations are added faster than systems mature. Marketing budgets increase, but lead quality becomes harder to explain. Revenue targets go up, while visibility into what’s actually driving demand goes down. On paper, the business is scaling.