Veritas won Bodycote by 25 pence, and the market wants a recount.
Two bids sat a penny apart for a month. Veritas found 25 more, and the shares now trade above the price that won.
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Every CEO exit is a sales lead with better stationery.
The most creative people in private equity are not operators.
Heidrick spent 22 years as the only publicly listed SHREK firm.
Every line below is said about you, in a room you are not in, by someone with the budget.
Partners Group can raise money faster than it can give it back
A record $16 billion raised, carry guidance cut to 20-25%, and gates on the funds clients most want out of. The fee machine is fine. The exit machine is guiding for 2027.
The Operating Partner Backlash Has Arrived, and It's Coming From Operators
The sharpest critique of the operating partner model is now coming from operators, on the record. What they are saying, why now, and how to tell a real model from a decorative one.
KKR's first core private equity bet just proved itself by ending.
Aon is paying $17 billion for USI, and KKR is calling the exit proof that its long-term holding vehicle compounds. Nine years, ninety acquisitions and two very different return numbers tell a slightly different story.
Who Actually Fixes Digital and Data in a PE Portfolio Company? (2026 Field Guide)
Six kinds of firm pitch for the same digital and data problem, at prices 20x apart. The field guide: what each tier does, the symptom that sends you there, and what it costs.
KKR explored a $10 billion exit. Apollo bought in, and KKR stayed.
Atlantic Aviation has more than doubled in value since 2021. The proof is a stake trade between two sponsors who both kept a seat.
Marketing Agency vs Embedded Operator: What a PE Portfolio Company Actually Needs
Two different purchases that get compared as if they were the same purchase. Written to the operating partner, not the CEO.
Why the Vocabulary Gap Is Getting Expensive
Get The Brochure If you read Not Very Private Equity, the language is already familiar. But following the language and running the room on it are two different skills, and many people in exactly these seats are still working off the first one. A founder gets a letter of intent
Toolkit
Carried interest, explained
Carried interest, usually called "carry", is the share of investment profits that a private equity firm keeps after its investors have been paid back. In a typical PE fund, the Limited Partners (the investors) put up the capital. The General Partner (the PE firm) runs the investments. When
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Continuation funds in private equity
A continuation fund is a new private equity fund that a PE firm raises specifically to buy one or more portfolio companies from an older fund it already manages. The old fund gets to exit. The companies move into the new fund. The PE firm keeps managing them for another
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EBITDA add-backs, explained
EBITDA add-backs are adjustments a company makes to its reported earnings to produce a higher "adjusted EBITDA" figure. The logic is that certain expenses in reported results are one-time, non-recurring, or non-operational, and so should be added back to arrive at the "real&
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Buy-and-build and multiple arbitrage
Buy-and-build, also called roll-up, is a private equity strategy where a firm buys a platform company in a fragmented industry and then acquires smaller competitors and adds them to the platform. Over 3-7 years, the combined group gets bigger and, in theory, more valuable per unit
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Earn-outs in PE deals
An earn-out is a deal structure where part of the purchase price for a company is deferred and paid later, contingent on the acquired company hitting agreed performance targets. Instead of paying the seller 100% of the price at closing, the buyer pays, say, 80% upfront and 20% in
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NAV lending, explained
NAV lending, or NAV financing, is when a private equity fund borrows money using its portfolio of investments as collateral. Instead of the fund's individual portfolio companies taking on debt (the traditional way PE uses leverage), the fund itself takes on debt at the fund level, secured by
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Covenant-lite loans, explained
A covenant-lite loan, often shortened to "cov-lite", is a leveraged loan with fewer of the protective clauses that lenders traditionally used to monitor borrower performance and intervene early if things went wrong. Traditional leveraged loans included "maintenance covenants" that required borrowers to periodically meet
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Tax receivable agreements (TRAs), explained
A tax receivable agreement, or TRA, is a contractual arrangement where a company agrees to share future tax savings with pre-IPO shareholders (often the private equity sponsor and the pre-IPO founders or managers). When a PE-backed company does an IPO using an "Up-C" structure,
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Two and twenty: the PE fee structure, explained
"Two and twenty" is shorthand for the fee structure most private equity and hedge funds use to compensate the General Partner: a 2% annual management fee charged on committed capital, plus 20% of profits after a hurdle rate has been met. The 2% pays the firm's
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Subscription line facilities, explained
A subscription line facility is a short-term loan to a private equity fund, secured by the fund's LP commitments. Instead of calling capital from LPs immediately when the fund wants to do a deal, the fund borrows from a bank, does the deal, and then either repays
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How does private equity actually work? A step-by-step breakdown
Private equity works by raising money from institutional investors, using that money (plus a lot of borrowed debt) to buy mature private companies, improving those companies over 4-7 years, and then selling them for a higher price. The detailed mechanics involve fund structures, capital calls, portfolio operating plans, leveraged
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Private equity explained: the beginner FAQ
Private equity is one of the most misunderstood industries in finance. Ask ten people what it is and you will get ten different answers: "the guys who bought Toys R Us", "the investors who own my dentist now", "some kind of hedge fund", "