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Every line below is said about you, in a room you are not in, by someone with the budget.

These are the five stages of management perception. Or, more accurately, the five stages of halo decay. Stage one: Nobody knows who you are. Stage two: Everyone is relieved you arrived. Stage three: You have become the safe pair of hands. Stage four: People start wondering what you actually do.

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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.

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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.

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Inc. may have built one of the better businesses associated with the Inc. 5000.

Sadly, it cannot enter its own award. Inc is part of Mansueto Ventures and applicants must be independent. The economics are lovely. 2026 application fees were $395, $495 or $695. Nonrefundable. Inc does not publish applicant numbers. It does publish 5,000 winners and tells eligible companies with revenue growth

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The OP had the title, but never had authority.

This happens constantly. A PE firm hires an operating partner with an impressive CV. Former CEO. Former consultant. Former divisional president. Knows the sector. Has battle scars. Can speak EBITDA without sounding like the finance team assembled him in a lab. Everyone is excited. Then they start. No board seat.

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Spencer Stuart has published its Board Index for 40 years.

Which is helpful, because apparently corporate governance needs an annual reminder that boards are still doing board things. In 2025, the S&P 1500 saw 168 new CEO appointments. The most since 2010. 84% were first time CEOs. 19 directors became CEOs, the highest number since 2020. That is

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The first rule of private equity is that nobody mentions the 2021 vintage.

The second rule is that everyone mentions AI instead, because apparently if you say “agentic workflow” three times in a board meeting the entry multiple becomes less embarrassing. 2021 was peak nonsense. Cheap debt. Heroic revenue adjustments. Software multiples written by people who had clearly been left unsupervised. Roll-up

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Boards keep saying they want lower risk CEO appointments.

Then they hire the more expensive, higher failure rate option because the candidate has shinier logos and the search firm brought a nicer lunch. External CEOs fail more often than internal hires. 30% vs 24%. They cost more. Roughly 15% more. They last less. 7.3 years vs 8.7.

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Sometimes the founder was not the problem after all.

PE loves a professional CEO. Grey hair. Big company logo. Excellent references. Talks fluently about cadence, alignment, transformation, and all the other words that make board members feel sedated in a premium way. I saw a business where the sponsor replaced the founder with one of these polished operator types.

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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

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PitchBook calls it headwinds. A dozen states call it the law.

PitchBook blames rates and utilisation. Its sharpest number is a 36% collapse in the one structure a dozen states just legislated against.

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Secondaries set another record. A quarter of deals failed or paused anyway.

The secondary market transacted $124 billion in the first half, a record on every measure Lazard tracks. Roughly 27% of transactions failed or were paused, which is also in the report.