news

News (w/e 2/27/26)

Lee McCabe

03 Mar 2026 — 1 min read

GIP and EQT Close In on $40 Billion AES Take-Private

BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners and EQT are in advanced talks to take AES Corp. private in a deal worth roughly $40 billion including debt, which would make it one of the largest infrastructure buyouts ever. The driver is simple and very 2026: AI data centers need power, and private capital wants to own the picks and shovels of that demand curve.

Private Equity Pivots Back to Clean Energy

After last year’s pullback, private equity is leaning back into clean energy, with firms like KKR and Energy Impact Partners actively scouting renewable infrastructure again. If the AES deal lands, it will confirm what everyone already suspects: when AI demand meets power scarcity, green assets stop being political and start being essential.

McKinsey Says PE Hit $2.6 Trillion in Deal Value — But the Backlog Is the Real Story

Global private equity deal value reached $2.6 trillion in 2025, up 19 percent year over year and the second-highest total ever recorded. The less celebrated stat is the 16,000 portfolio companies held for more than four years, which tells you liquidity is improving but the traffic jam is still very real.

KKR Posts Record Embedded Gains as Earnings Season Closes

KKR ended Q4 with roughly $744 billion in AUM and about $19 billion in embedded gains sitting in the portfolio, up meaningfully year over year. Apollo, meanwhile, pushed more than $225 billion in originations and posted record fee-related earnings, reinforcing that scale and credit are carrying the asset class right now.

TPG Nears £1 Billion Deal for Optum UK

TPG is close to acquiring Optum UK in a deal valued at more than £1 billion, targeting the electronic patient record systems used by most NHS GPs. Healthcare IT remains one of the few places where regulation, recurring revenue, and switching costs combine into something that actually looks like durable private equity value.

Deals (w/e 2/27/26)

BlackRock GIP and EQT Target Clean Energy Assets from AES BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners and EQT are circling clean energy assets tied to AES at a moment when renewable valuations have reset hard. After the 2025 drop off, private equity is not retreating. It is re underwriting. The math

Operating partners need a badge and a gun, not another steering committee invite.

Private equity keeps hiring “value creation” people, then sends them into portfolio companies with zero mandate, zero budget, and the authority level of a polite email. And then everyone acts confused when the plan doesn’t happen. Obvious value creation: We underwrote 300 bps of margin expansion from “procurement synergies.

The easiest way for an agency to look good is to pick a KPI that can’t be audited.

That’s the whole game. You ask for growth. They pick the metric that moves fastest and connects to cash slowest. Suddenly the weekly update is a victory lap because CTR is up. Or CPM is down. Or “engagement” is strong. Or leads are “cheaper”. None of which tells you

Most roll ups don’t fail because of competition.

They fail because integration was treated as a future problem. The pitch always sounds the same. Buy fragmented assets. Centralise back office. Unlock synergies. Scale. What gets skipped is the hard part. How these businesses actually work once they’re stitched together. Different pricing logic. Different sales behaviours. Different tech