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The deal team that sources an investment should not be the same team that monitors it. That sounds obvious. In private equity, it somehow is not. The same people who got excited about the deal, won the internal argument, pushed the valuation, sold the thesis, and assured everyone the risks
Toolkit
A portfolio operations group (also called a portfolio operations team, value creation team, or portfolio resources group) is the in-house team a private equity firm uses to improve the operating performance of the companies it owns, as opposed to sourcing and structuring the deals. The deal team buys the
Toolkit
Ask two private equity investors what happens after the wire hits and you will get two different answers. One buys a company to keep it: hold it indefinitely, keep the people, take the cash flows, and let compounding do the work. The other buys a company to change it: install
Toolkit
Every private equity deck in 2026 says the same thing. Returns will come from operations, not leverage. The financial-engineering era is over, the operating era has begun, and the numbers now back the slogan: in S&P Global Market Intelligence's 2026 Private Equity Survey, 71% of
Toolkit
We treat a continuation fund as what it is: a tool, not a verdict. The same vehicle that lets a genuinely strong company keep compounding under an owner who understands it can also let a tired one dodge the markdown it has already earned. Nothing in the structure tells you
Toolkit
A private equity carve-out is when a buyer purchases a division, business unit or product line out of a larger parent company and stands it up as a separate, standalone business. The parent no longer wants the unit, or wants the cash more than the asset; the buyer thinks
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That’s why WPP is now doing reorg karaoke while Publicis is eating the category. Same industry. Same strategic questions. Completely different answers. WPP spent a decade defending the old model. Creative networks. Media buying. Holding company theatre. Then sold Kantar, branded itself “Open”, merged agencies, retired famous names, and
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They made an actual strategic choice. While most holding companies spent the last decade rearranging deck chairs, renaming the same six agencies, and pretending “integration” meant putting twelve people on the same Teams call, Publicis quietly rebuilt the machine. They bought Epsilon for $4.4bn. They scaled Sapient. They built
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Martin Sorrell built the thing through 133 acquisitions. At its peak, WPP had more than 60 flagship brands spread across creative, media, PR, brand consulting, health, and data. It looked impressive. Which is usually the first sign something is hiding under the carpet. Then came the clean-up. VML, Ogilvy,
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They are having a bad model. WPP cut 9,000 jobs. Omnicom and IPG are smashing themselves together and still taking out thousands of roles. Dentsu cut 3,400. Havas is basically flat. Meanwhile Publicis added around 5,000 people. That should make a few people in holding company boardrooms
Life
Researchers found a Wordle strategy that wins 99% of the time. It uses Shannon entropy to maximise information gain per guess rather than guessing likely answers. The same principle, incidentally, that good IC questioning is supposed to follow. SCIENCE DAILY
News
The Fed's hawkish pivot reframes the entire 2026 PE thesis. Kevin Warsh's debut FOMC meeting on June 17. Rates held at 3.50-3.75% but nine of 18 officials now project at least one hike this year. Median dot moved from 3.4% to 3.