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The Eight-Year Hold: Private Equity's $4 Trillion Backlog Is Now an Operating Problem
The deal was underwritten for five years. The company is still here in year eight. Almost nobody planned for the difference.
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What Is an Operating Partner in Private Equity? The Operator's Guide (2026)
What the role actually is when the slide deck hits the portfolio company: definition, deal-stage duties, the five flavours, pay, and where the role is heading.
Value Creation
What Is a NAV Loan? A Plain-English Guide to NAV Financing in Private Equity (2026)
Funds are borrowing against their whole portfolio to manufacture cash. How it actually works, and who carries the risk.
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Continuation Fund vs Traditional Exit: When Private Equity Holds Instead of Sells (2026)
A continuation fund lets a PE firm sell an asset to itself instead of to a third party. How it compares to a traditional exit, when each is the honest choice, and the operator's tells for which one you are really in.
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The Best Private Equity Newsletters in 2026
A categorised, honest guide to the best private equity newsletters in 2026, grouped by role: daily deal flow, institutional trade reads, operator-focused newsletters, and commentary.
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The PE-Backed CFO Tenure Squeeze: Why 2.5 Years Is the New Normal in 2026
The average tenure of a Chief Financial Officer at a private-equity-backed company in 2026 is 2.5 years. That is roughly half the 5.6-year average for public-company CFOs, and it means a typical portfolio company runs through two CFOs during a 5-year hold period.
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The Five Operating Philosophies of Private Equity: A 2026 Taxonomy
Private equity is not one operating philosophy but several. A neutral field guide to the five you will actually encounter, what each believes, who runs it, and when it works.
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What Is an EBITDA Bridge in Private Equity? Definition, Example, and Why It Decides the Deal
An EBITDA bridge is a waterfall analysis that explains the change in a company's EBITDA from one point in time to another by breaking the total movement into its component drivers: organic volume, pricing, cost inflation, acquisitions, one-time items, and operational initiatives. In private equity, the EBITDA
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Operating Partner vs Fractional Executive Firm: How PE-Backed Companies Choose Between Embedded and On-Demand Leadership
Operating partners embed inside a single leadership team. Fractional executive firms deploy a roster across many. Here is when each one wins.
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What is a Value Creation Plan in Private Equity? An Operator's Definition (2026)
What a Value Creation Plan is in private equity, the six lever categories, who builds and owns it, how it maps to the EBITDA bridge, and why most VCPs fail.
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The Operational Era of Private Equity: 7 Shifts That Redefined Value Creation in 2026
In 2026, private equity completed a structural shift from a leverage-driven returns model to an operations-driven returns model: 47% of value creation now comes from operational improvement (versus 18% in the 1980s), portfolio companies must now deliver 10% to 12% annual EBITDA growth to match historical IRRs (versus
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Operating partner compensation: how much do operating partners actually make? (2026)
The short answer A private equity operating partner typically earns a base salary of $200,000 to $500,000, a performance bonus of $250,000 to $1 million tied to fund and portfolio-company results, and carried interest of roughly 1% to 3% of the fund's carry pool.