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A business that spent years hoovering up brands with borrowed money ended up in Chapter 11 in September 2025 with liabilities estimated at $10 billion to $50 billion against assets of $1 billion to $10 billion. By January, after a $1.1 billion bankruptcy loan, it had about $190 million
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Every private equity firm now says it is operationally focused. That usually means they hired one operating partner, gave him a headshot, added a page to the website, and now act as if the firm has been rebuilt in the image of Danaher. It hasn't. Real operational focus
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Private equity firms love saying they want operators. Then they hire the same profile they always hire. Same schools. Same banks. Same consulting firms. Same immaculate CVs full of institutions that impress other people with immaculate CVs. They select for polish, pattern recognition, and the ability to talk confidently about
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They have an answer for the board. That is not the same thing. Every portfolio company is now getting asked the same question: "What's your AI strategy?" And most of them respond with a tool. A chatbot. A copilot. Some half baked workflow automation. A demo
Life
Smart rings are the wearable that doesn't make you look like you're auditioning for a sci-fi film. Health tracking, AI note-taking, AR glasses control.....all from something that looks like jewellery. GADGET FLOW
News
NY Focus reports on Carlyle's NYC residential real estate buying spree. Walk-ups in Bushwick, Greenpoint, Crown Heights. A 13-story rental in Gowanus. Two Park Slope rowhouses. All through shell companies. Mostly non-rent-stabilised, mostly under 10 units. Tenants of earlier Carlyle buildings reported steeper rent
Deals
General Atlantic closes $3bn acquisition of Team Services Holdings from Alpine Investors. Home care services across all 50 states. 100,000 caregivers. 10x EBITDA. A sponsor-to-sponsor deal that closed without a press release. Alpine built Team Services from a 2015 partnership with TEAM RMS into a national platform
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If I were building a post acquisition integration playbook, the first page would not be about synergies. It would be about the three people you absolutely cannot lose. Not the people with the biggest titles. Not the people who speak most in board meetings. Not the ones who suddenly become
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The fastest way to damage a founder led business is to replace intuition with process theatre. Founders make decisions quickly because they carry the full context in their head. They know the customers. They know the people. They know which numbers matter and which ones are there to keep finance
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Private equity has a media conflict of interest that everybody understands and nobody says out loud. The publications covering the industry depend on the same firms for access, advertising, event sponsorship, subscriptions, and conference budgets. So naturally the coverage is balanced, constructive, and just critical enough to feel legitimate without
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The hardest conversation we have at Claymore is almost never about which technology to buy. It is about proving how that investment shows up in EBITDA. That is where the room goes quiet. Everyone says they want digital transformation. Everyone wants better data, better systems, better reporting, better lead flow,
Toolkit
Carried interest, usually called "carry", is the share of investment profits that a private equity firm keeps after its investors have been paid back. In a typical PE fund, the Limited Partners (the investors) put up the capital. The General Partner (the PE firm) runs the investments. When