Life
Walk through midtown Manhattan at 7:30am. Between the Sweetgreen salads and the AirPod calls, you'll spot them: an army of fleece-vested analysts, all dressed like they're about to close a Series B in Montauk. It wasn't always like this. Pre-2008, Wall
News
Carlyle Circles Lukoil’s Foreign Assets as Sanctions Fatigue Sets In Carlyle is sniffing around Lukoil’s non-Russian assets, a sprawl of energy holdings valued around $22 billion, according to Reuters. It’s the kind of geopolitical scavenger hunt only a top-tier PE shop attempts — buying orphaned assets
Deals
Arcline Investment Management Acquires Novaria Group in ~$2.2 Billion Deal Arcline is buying Novaria Group from KKR in an all-cash transaction valued at roughly $2.2 billion. Novaria, the Texas-based aerospace and defense components supplier, has been one of KKR’s industrial roll-up winners—13 acquisitions,
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And access, done right, is one of the highest-margin products on earth. Access is what turns a $100 bottle of wine into a $10,000 membership. It's what turns a hotel into Soho House, a gym into Equinox, and a handbag into Hermès. The product is just
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AI isn't coming for customer service. It's already running it. Klarna's AI assistant handles 2.3 million conversations a month. That's two-thirds of their customer chats, with the work output of 700 agents. Resolution time dropped from 11 minutes to 2.
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A perfectly diverse cast walking through glass corridors, sleeves rolled up, saving capitalism one portfolio at a time. In reality, it's 12 Angry Men. Same suits. Same stories. Same arguments, just with better coffee and worse empathy. You can see the gap every time the corporate photographer visits.
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The mythology around startups has gone from inspiring to absurd. A "unicorn" used to mean something rare: a company with a billion-dollar valuation and a business that worked. Now? It mostly means "a company good at storytelling and burning other people's money." The
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News
CapitalSpring Closes Initial $505 Million Toward $1 B Target for Fund VII CapitalSpring, the Nashville shop that bankrolls franchise and multi-unit consumer businesses, just hit $505 million on the first close of its new $1 billion fund. Every dollar came from existing LPs—most upsized. That’s loyalty, or
Deals
Denny’s Corporation Goes Private in $620 Million Buyout A consortium led by TriArtisan Capital Advisors, Treville Capital, and franchisee Yadav Enterprises is taking Denny’s Corporation private in an all-cash transaction valued at $620 million, including debt. Shareholders will receive $6.25 per share, representing a 52% premium
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The pattern is almost identical, only faster, louder, and with more zeroes. In 1999, we had people registering random domain names and raising millions because they had a “web business plan.” No product, no revenue, just a buzzword and a slide deck. Sound familiar? Now it’s AI. Every company