"If you subscribe to our worldview that bringing superintelligence at scale at very low cost is going to be transformative, you try to figure out - how can I invest in that and take the least amount of risk?"
The University of Utah approved a private equity deal Tuesday that promised hundreds of millions of dollars for the school's athletic department, which like nearly every athletic department in the country is running an annual deficit. The Utes need money. Otro Capital of New York, a firm that seeks investments in sports, sees an opportunity. The company is offering more than $400 million to the school, a source told ESPN, plus Otro's operational expertise, to generate new revenue streams for the department.
WREXHAM, Wales -- Wrexham's celebrity owners have sold a minority stake in their on-the-rise soccer club to Apollo Sports Capital, a U.S.-based private equity firm. The deal, which was announced on Monday with no terms disclosed, includes investment by Apollo in the redevelopment of Wrexham's stadium and the surrounding area in the small Welsh city brought to fame by its namesake soccer club since American actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac bought it in 2021 and helped create a popular docuseries about the community.
The United States is short 4 million housing units, with a particular dearth of starter homes, moderately priced apartments in low-rises, and family-friendly dwellings. Interest rates are high, which has stifled construction and pushed up the cost of mortgages. As a result, more Americans are renting, and roughly half of those households are spending more than a third of their income on shelter.
After a burst of new fund launches - enough for one KKR executive to joke last month that the US now has more private equity funds than McDonald's - more funding than ever is flowing into the biggest names. So far this year, nearly 46% of all private equity capital raised in 2025 has been secured by the 10 largest funds, up from 34.5% in 2024, according to PitchBook's private equity outlook report.
OpenAI is taking an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, whose parent company is one of the AI giant's major investors, Thrive Capital. Thrive Holdings operates like a private equity firm for AI, rolling up companies that it believes could benefit from the tech in sectors like accounting and IT services. Neither company disclosed the terms of the deal, but it will involve OpenAI embedding engineering, research, and product teams within Thrive's companies to accelerate AI adoption and boost efficiency, the company says.
Within the UK, a consultation process is triggered when at least 20 redundancies are proposed to be made within a 90 day period. The process follows on from the company announcing in September that it has been bought by an unknown private equity firm. Due to UK laws, Splash Damage must notify and consult with employee representatives or trade unions, with required notice periods of at least 30 days if there are 20 to 99 redundancies or 45 days if 100 or more are expected.
The number of private credit deals that are changed after the initial deal is signed to include more risky terms for the lender is on the rise, according to Lincoln International, an investment bank advisory service that monitors that market. That's a sign that there are potential "cracks" in the $3 trillion private credit market, according to Brian Garfield, Lincoln's managing director and head of U.S. portfolio valuations.
Despite naming his chain with a heavy dose of innuendo, he and his partners intended it as a beachside dining spot for young people and families. "It started as a place five miles from the beach," Kiefer, now the CEO of Hooters Inc., told Fortune. "You came in from the beach, could throw some coveralls on, shorts...and it was a hangout." But recently, the restaurant chain known more for its scantily clad servers than perhaps its wings and beer, strayed too far from its roots,
During a September presentation, Gray said the firm's job acceptance rate for its 2025 analyst class dropped to just 0.2%, with 57,000 applications for just 138 entry-level roles. That's down from the already incredibly selective 0.4% in 2021, when 29,000 people applied for 103 first-year analyst roles. As the industry continues to grow in size - Blackstone, for its part, is managing over $1 trillion for clients - the private equity career path has stepped front and center for ambitious young people.
A critical turning point in this development occurred in October when Minnesota state regulators greenlit the acquisition of Allete by asset management behemoth BlackRock - set to become Allete's majority stakeholder - and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Allete owns Minnesota Power, the main electric utility in northern Minnesota. The approval came against significant community opposition and, as Truthout previously reported, an administrative law judge's report that strongly recommended against the deal.
In a deal valued at $4 billion, Boyu is acquiring 60% of Starbucks China's business, with plans to close in the first three months of the year, per a press release. The release said that the Boyu partnership would help elevate Starbucks' customer experience in China and speed expansion into new cities. In an open letter on Monday, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol said that through the Boyu partnership, he aims for Starbucks to grow from 8,000 stores in Chinato over 20,000.
Sinead Colton Grant, the chief investment officer at BNY's wealth division, said the traditional strategy of splitting your portfolio 60% on stocks and 40% on bonds no longer yields the same returns. "What a 60/40 portfolio would have given you in the late 90s in terms of exposure to the broader global economy - that's giving you something a lot more narrow today," she said. "If you look at the changes in market structure over the last 20-plus years, they have brought us to a place where to have full exposure to the economy, you need to have exposure to private assets," she added.
Ensemble Health, a major player in healthcare revenue management, is seeking a potential $13 billion sale or IPO next year, Business Insider has learned. Ensemble, owned primarily by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Berkshire Partners, has tapped JPMorgan to pursue a sale, five people with knowledge of the deal told Business Insider. At the same time, Ensemble is considering an IPO and has pulled in Goldman Sachs to support the dual-track approach, three of the people said.
For most people, it's natural to assume that if something is exclusive to the wealthiest echelons of society, it must be better. Asset management firms looking to access trillions of "retail" investor dollars explicitly reference this exclusivity when marketing private equity offerings. But investors should be wary when fund marketers talk about "democratizing investing" or opening access to areas previously only available to the elite.
Several investors have built strategies focused on long-term structural trends, accepting near-term volatility in exchange for exposure to multi-decade opportunities. These individuals identify fundamental shifts in demographics, technology, or economic organization that create persistent tailwinds for specific sectors or geographies. This approach requires conviction to maintain positions through market cycles and patience to allow theses to play out over extended periods. Investors pursuing long-term structural strategies often accept illiquidity, concentrate portfolios more than conventional wisdom suggests, and communicate perspectives that diverge from consensus views.
The acquisition sees a gutting of key leadership at the auction house: Chabi Nouri has left as chief executive officer and Céline Assimon has stepped down as chief commercial officer. Nouri was appointed to the role only last year, while Assimon joined in 2023. Meanwhile, Alex Lejeune, currently Bonham's chief financial officer, will leave at the end of the year.
"All public AAA companies have overemphasized 'returning value to shareholders' over taking care of all stakeholder groups, including labor," he said. "Now, that will be shifted to keeping the company afloat amidst enormous debt payments and servicing [private equity] owners."
This was both a short- and long-term opportunity that was hard to pass up, given where the market is today in the mortgage space and the amount of M&A volume we're going to see over the next zero to five years, Guzzo said in an interview. It's going to be a very active time in the markets.
Franchise-focused private equity firm Franchise Equity Partners (FEP) announced it acquired a majority stake in 7 Crew, the second-largest franchisee of the fast-growing U.S. coffee chain 7 Brew. With the deal, FEP said it is following through on plans to open more than 200 7 Brew drive-through locations across Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Existing 7 Crew investors Masked Rider Capital and Red Sky Holdings are retaining significant equity stakes in 7 Crew, which currently operates approximately 50 7 Brew locations,
