#private-equity

#private-equity

Eighteen48 Partners, the London-based alternative asset manager co-founded by Julien Sevaux, Tarek AbuZayyad, and Edward Clive, has closed €175 million for the first tranche of its inaugural private equity fund. The fund is targeting €350 million in total and will back mid-market buyouts across Europe, sourced exclusively through independent sponsors, dealmakers who find and negotiate acquisitions before raising the capital to complete them, rather than investing from a pre-committed pool.

The Trian Fund Management cofounder is looking for outside investors to help with a takeover of Wendy's, the Financial Times reports. The news isn't exactly surprising-in February, Trian used its regulatory filing to announce it might sell its stake or attempt a takeover of Wendy's.

Intertek has become the latest FTSE 100 business to agree to a takeover, backing a 10.6bn approach from a private equity firm owned by Sweden's billionaire Wallenberg family. After rebuffing three previous approaches, Intertek's board said it was minded to recommend the 60-a-share tilt from the Swedish buyout firm EQT to shareholders, if there is a firm offer. The deal is worth 10.6bn including debt, or 9.4bn without. The previous bids were pegged at 58, 54 and 51.0 a share.

In California, childcare workers, those who teach and care for the state's youngest residents, earn a median wage of less than $16 an hour. That's half as much as elementary and middle school teachers' median salaries, and $10 below the median wage for all workers in the state, according to the UC Berkeley's Center for the Study of Childcare Employment.

Stonewood now have what it is calling a strong minority interest on the club's board alongside an existing consortium of local business owners. In return it has pledged an initial seven-figure investment as a springboard to a potentially exciting next chapter. Moritz and his fellow investor John H Tippins, both in their 60s, normally specialise in industrial companies but, if anything, the novelty value has further stoked their enthusiasm for the Pirates of Penzance.

G2A frames the move as the next step in scaling an organisation that, by its own account, has reached institutional scale without ever raising outside capital. The numbers behind the announcement According to G2A, the marketplace now turns over an annual gross merchandise value of nearly $400m, with EBITDA above $20m and stable double-digit year-on-year growth. It serves more than 35 million users across 180 countries and recorded more than 200 million visits in 2025.

While we continue to believe in the strength of the core business, TGJones has experienced highly challenging trading conditions over the past year, along with many other brick-and-mortar retailers. The firm laid the blame squarely at the door of three culprits: the 'forced' rebrand from the trusted, 233-year-old WHSmith fascia, which it said had dented brand recognition almost overnight; rising operating costs 'as a direct result of government policy'.

Fedele Confalonieri took a serious swipe at Cardinale's management of AC Milan, stating that RedBird is like a bank and therefore has no interest in winning the Scudetto. He emphasized that while private equity funds aim for budgetary rigor, it is not true that they never win, citing successful examples like Atlético Madrid and Inter.

Anthropic is teaming up with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs to form a new AI services company targeting private equity-backed businesses, with a total investment of $1.5 billion.

Several private equity firms and Hollywood power players have expressed interest in buying parts of Casey Wasserman's music and sports management firm after it abruptly went up for sale.

Commvault focuses on data protection and recovery in the event of cyberattacks, ransomware, and system failures for both enterprise environments and cloud providers. Its clients include 3M, Sony, and Hilton.

We really had a good feel for the place, and the nursery manager at the time really sold us on the vibe. It's not a decision that's made lightly.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer stated that the proposed rule aims to fulfill President Trump's promise for a new golden age by fostering a retirement system that allows more Americans to retire with dignity.

"I'm surprised by how neutral the rule was, when you think about the massive amount of lobbying there's been around it. It doesn't say certain assets are good or bad. Instead, it really focuses on making a rules-based framework instead of a litigation-based one."

Few founders get to revisit the decisions they made when they first scaled their company the way Jaclyn Johnson did. Johnson bootstrapped Create & Cultivate from a side project in 2012 into a multi-million-dollar media and events platform for ambitious women, then sold a majority stake to private equity in 2021 in a deal valued at about $22 million. Three years later, after watching the company struggle under new ownership, she did something far rarer: She bought it back.

"You had all these geopolitical tensions, and you had this flight to quality with private equity," said Lawson, HGGC's chief executive officer. "The opportunity set for many investors has shifted to what we call mid-cap or middle-market businesses."

Private equity giant Carlyle has thrown a £150m lifeline to online retailer Very - just as mounting debt threatens to sink the company. Sources say the refinancing deal will keep Very afloat, giving breathing space to a business grappling with sky-high borrowing costs, fierce competition, and a cash-strapped consumer market. An insider commented: "Without this deal, Very could have faced serious trouble. Carlyle is betting big to save its investment - the stakes couldn't be higher."

Blackstone and co-investors, including Teachers' Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Assets, and Nexus Venture Partners, have agreed to invest up to $600 million of primary equity in Neysa, giving Blackstone a majority stake, Blackstone and Neysa told TechCrunch. The Mumbai-headquartered startup also plans to raise an additional $600 million in debt financing as it expands GPU capacity, a sharp increase from the $50 million it had raised previously.

New research from BusinessesForSale.com states that big companies may buy multiple shops that have the potential to be financially profitable. And in some cases, they may be willing to invest in one established shop. These buyers include private equity firms, and these groups may be seeking to improve shops through operational overhauls. Often, private equity firms are aiming to see high rental income and shop growth within a set timeframe. They'll look for business sales in the UK that can meet their financial goals.

The cupcake boom, a twenty-year dessert trend that once captivated the nation, ended with a thunk. However, America's sweet tooth doesn't retire - it just hunts for its next obsession. When all ofSprinkles' stores abruptly closed at the end of 2025, a curtain dropped on an era. Not because the dessert chain, cofounded by pastry chef and entrepreneur Candace Nelson in 2005, was the biggest, but because it was the name-brand symbol of the nation's cupcake years.

A long-time client has asked Kinney to help identify a private equity/finance attorney to join as a partner in the firm's lucrative group. No book required. The client is a top Am Law firm.

U.S. worker engagement has stagnated for decades, with more than two-thirds of workers feeling detached or disengaged. To reverse the trend, many executives have strived to build an "ownership culture," hoping personal responsibility will drive productivity. Yet most omit the most vital ingredient, actual ownership. We spent the past four years studying companies that committed to this missing piece, extending equity to all employees.

Data science and artificial intelligence are fundamentally redefining what constitutes skill in investment management, shifting the sources of sustainable competitive advantage in ways most firms have yet to comprehend. This is not about automating existing workflows. It is about reconceptualizing which analytical tasks can be systematized and which genuinely require human judgment, then rebuilding investment processes around that distinction. Firms that fail to recognize this depth are not simply adopting tools more slowly. They are misunderstanding the nature of the change itself.

"Yesterday, following Vimeo's recent acquisition by a private equity firm, I learned that I, along with a large portion of the company, was impacted by layoffs," wrote the company's former vice president of Global Brand & Creative, Dave Brown. He is referring to a firm called Bending Spoons that bought Vimeo for $1.38 billion in the latter half of 2025.