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From the LP side, one of the most revealing parts of manager diligence is not the deck. It is not the track record table. It is not the polished answer on sourcing. It is not the slide on value creation with the usual mix of certainty and selective memory. It
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Buy the local operator at 4 to 7x EBITDA. Tuck in the smaller add ons at similar, sometimes lower, multiples. Build the platform. Professionalise the call centre, CRM, digital engine, pricing discipline, branch performance, technician utilisation, procurement and reporting. Then sell the platform at 10 to 18x. Everyone in PE
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In private equity, "proprietary deal flow" is one of those phrases that sounds much more impressive the less you examine it. It suggests access. Edge. Relationships. A secret pipeline of opportunities unavailable to the rest of the market. What it usually means is the broker called you first.
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For years, everyone called these businesses private equity firms because that was the original costume. The market has moved on. Some of the firms have too. Blackstone became an asset aggregator. The private equity heritage is still there, obviously, but the earnings story is now recurring fees at enormous scale.
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The reason private equity cannot keep operating talent is simple. It pays for transactions and promotes for transactions. That tells you everything. A firm can say it cares about value creation all day. It can put operating partners on the website. It can talk about portfolio support, strategic resources, and
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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.
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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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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 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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No insurance balance sheet. No synthetic spread income. No great mystical sermon about permanent capital while someone quietly bolts an annuity book onto the back of the firm. Just fees. From 2014 to 2025, Ares took fee-related earnings from roughly $150m to $1.8bn. Over the same period, realized
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Operating partners do not usually fail because they lack skill. They fail because nobody gave them authority, air cover, or a mandate anyone in the business actually respects. That is a very different problem. Private equity loves the idea of the operating partner. It sounds serious. Hands on. Value creation
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That sounds obvious, but it matters. The biggest alternative asset managers have spent the last decade making the model less dependent on the traditional private equity cycle. Insurance. Credit. Permanent capital. Spread earnings. Balance sheet scale. All very clever, all very useful, all slightly funny when the industry still calls