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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
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I asked a model to launch a $2B services roll up. It named the fund, designed the logo, scraped every founder over 55 within a 50 mile radius of a metro with above average household income, and ranked them by “succession anxiety score.” It built the investment committee memo before
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Capital is a commodity now. Everyone has a logo, a banker list, a lender relationship, and a “proprietary deal flow” story that’s basically networking with better lighting. The firms that win won’t be the ones that can buy companies. That part is easy-ish. They’ll be the
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Most businesses don’t have pricing power. They have a CFO with a spreadsheet, a CMO with a hope, and a sales team quietly discounting in the background. This is the bit everyone skips: pricing power is only half the game. The other half is operational control. And PE loves
Deals
None of the following are announced deals. These are themes repeatedly showing up in recent reporting, earnings commentary, banker conversations, and capital-markets behavior. PE Circling Honeywell’s Carve-Out Pipeline There’s increasing chatter around Honeywell as it continues to rationalize its portfolio, with large-cap sponsors like Advent
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Every deal team has the same comfort blanket in the IC deck: multiple expansion plus strategic buyer interest, because nothing says “value creation” like hoping the market gets horny again. Apollo put numbers on it in their Market Insight, Private Equity Returns to Its Roots (Jan 29, 2026): from 2010
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It’s usually 40 slides of heroic initiatives, and somehow none of them include the two things that actually move revenue in the real world. Retention and the front door. Because the quickest way to create “growth” isn’t another channel, another vendor, another dashboard, another AI pilot. It’s
Deals
Highlander Partners Acquires Tapatio Hot Sauce Highlander Partners acquired the Tapatio hot sauce brand from the founding family in a deal announced this past week. Price wasn’t disclosed, but the logic is pure consumer PE: a cult brand with absurd household penetration, decades of unspent brand equity, and zero
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Business has never had more communication tools and somehow never communicated less effectively. Entire projects now die in group chats. Deals stall in inboxes. Relationships drift because everyone is too busy “circling back” to actually speak. Messenger and email have their place, but they’ve also created an entire generation
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Nothing says “we’re modern” like a 14 point AI strategy slide no one can ship. You know the one. It appears at the end of the board deck, stapled on after the real agenda, right between “Talent” and “Other”. A handful of buzzwords, a diagram with arrows, and a
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Most don’t survive the first 12 months. Let that sink in. A recent-ish study of large U.S. buyouts found that 71% of companies hired a new CEO under PE ownership. (Source: Gompers, Kaplan & Mukharlyamov “The Market for CEOs: Evidence from Private Equity,” 2022/2023) And PE
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Not the awkward tail end you quietly ignore, the default operating model for managers who can’t raise, can’t exit, but can still invoice. Trilantic just took a very public blood transfusion: Blackstone and Neuberger putting at least $600m into a deeply discounted continuation vehicle. Call it “liquidity”. It’