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The safest asset class in the room just started checking the exits.
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A lot of firms sell an operating model. They bought a Trello board.
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Standardisation is what people demand when they don’t trust management.
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Private equity “returning to its roots” is a polite way of saying the party ended and someone finally turned the lights on.
news
News (w/e 2/27/26)
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
deals
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
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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.
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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
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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
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Bain just put it in writing: “12 is the new 5.” 
Translation for anyone still clinging to 2016: the deal doesn’t work unless you actually run the business. Awful, I know. A decade ago, a “typical” buyout could hit a 2.5x over five years with ~5% annual EBITDA growth because leverage was fat and multiple expansion did the heavy
views
“Incentives are aligned” is the adult version of “don’t worry about it.”
It’s what people say when they haven’t done the hard part, which is deciding who actually owns the outcome, what “good” looks like, and what happens when it doesn’t show up. This is the incentives problem in four squares. Top right is grown up capitalism. Clear targets.