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Most PE strategy decks could change logos unnoticed.

I have seen the same "differentiated thesis" slide in enough IC presentations to qualify as a recurring medical condition. Buy-and-build. Operational improvement. Digital transformation. Professionalise management. Accelerate growth. Expand margins. The colours change. The font changes. Occasionally someone adds a diagonal line and calls it a

Deals

In February Workday's answer was its founder. In August it might be Silver Lake.

Reuters says Silver Lake has spent months in talks over a take-private at more than $50 billion. Six months ago, Workday's answer to the same problem was paying its founder $138.8 million to fix it in public.

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Brookfield's $12.5 billion of carry has spent years almost arriving.

Brookfield's release is headlined 15% earnings growth. Consolidated net income fell 33%. Between the two sits $12.5 billion of unrealised carry, of which the firm converted $121 million after selling $40 billion of assets.

What Is a Digital Maturity Assessment?

A structured diagnostic that scores how a company uses digital channels, data and technology to generate revenue, and turns the score into a ranked, costed investment list. What it covers, what the output should be, and why most of them change nothing.

The Ice Cube Test

Sponsored by Crawford McMillan Every investment committee evaluating software right now is pricing a risk none of them has ever measured. Q2 made that expensive. Software deal value fell 65.7% year over year, per PitchBook's Q2 US PE Breakdown, not because buyers think every legacy software business

Deals

After thirteen years, Providence exits ATG to a buyer who never has to sell.

Providence bought ATG in 2013 promising global expansion, and sold it on Tuesday at a reported $6 billion. Thirteen years is not a hold period, it is a tenancy.

Deals

Apollo's biggest sports investment is a $2.6 billion loan to the Yankees.

The Yankees raised $2.6 billion from Apollo without selling control, four months before baseball's expected lockout. The press release calls it a partnership. The proceeds line calls it a refinancing.

Views

Every year you sit on committed capital, your IRR math gets worse.

The industry calls it dry powder and treats it like optionality. We have $3.7 trillion in uncommitted capital waiting for the right deal. Sounds prudent. Sounds disciplined. Sounds like a fund that will not overpay. It is also a ticking fee clock. LPs are paying management fees on committed

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Every partner went to the same five schools and worked at the same three banks.

Who exactly is bringing the differentiated insight? PE has a cognitive diversity problem and it has nothing to do with demographics. It is about pattern matching. The entire industry hires from the same pipeline, trains people in the same models, promotes the same profiles, and then wonders why every firm

Views

Increasingly, the most honest question in private equity.

Because the model used to be beautifully simple. Buy a decent business, add leverage, wait for multiple expansion, sell it to the next optimist in a fleece vest. A proper industry. Lovely manners. Terrible incentives. Now the hangover is starting to look a bit less fun. Bain says the backlog

Views

The AI discussion in most PE board meetings follows the same script.

Someone mentions AI. The CEO says they are "exploring opportunities." A board member asks if they should hire a Chief AI Officer. The operating partner suggests starting with a use case. Everyone agrees that is sensible. Nothing happens for six months. I have spent the last year looking

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Same disruption. Four very different panic responses.

McKinsey is compressing the pyramid. Fewer people, more Lilli, more outcome-based fees. The strategy is basically: protect the advice layer and use AI to make the machine underneath less embarrassingly bloated. BCG is scaling. More people, more India, more BCG X, more AI-tied revenue. It is treating AI