Private Equity 24 Hours

Last updated: August 11, 2026, 2:44 AM ET

Dealmaking Roundup

Private equity deal activity remained brisk despite a sluggish quarter overall. Bernhard Capital agreed to take Bowman Consulting private for $1bn, with a 35-day go-shop provision. I Squared Capital struck a $733m take-private of oOh!media at a 100% premium. New Mountain is acquiring fire safety provider Jensen Hughes from Gryphon. Amberjack Capital closed its carve-out of Flowserve’s PMV Automation group. KKR took a strategic stake in Crowe Advisory. On the larger end, Apollo landed a £5.7bn recommended offer for easy Jet. Meanwhile, CPP Investments teamed up with HSI in a $143m deal for a 49.5% interest in two landmark Brazilian hotels.

Fundraising & Capital Flows

Fundraising totals hit new highs even as dealflow slowed. StepStone surpassed $20bn in private wealth AUM, with its SPRING vehicle attracting nearly $1.7bn in subscriptions. Brookfield raised a record $77bn in Q2, drawing on its private equity, infrastructure and credit franchises. In Asia, Korea's Employment Insurance Fund committed 120bn won to blind-pool PE/VC funds. On the minority side, VSS closed a stake in Cordoba, betting on infrastructure transformation. Overall, PE dealflow had its worst Q2 since 2020, with TMT seeing the steepest decline.

Sector & Market Trends

Investors are rotating into thematic areas tied to real-world infrastructure. VCs are closely watching 17 physical AI startups, while First Momentum highlighted the most underrated deeptech fields. New unicorn creation is accelerating: 195 companies joined the board in H1 2026, already surpassing full-year 2025 totals, according to new unicorn counts. A wave of major AI IPOs could return significant liquidity to LPs, fueling a new VC fundraising cycle. Meanwhile, secondaries markets are diverging as continuation fund activity outstrips traditional secondaries, noted in the secondaries divergence analysis.

International & Regional Moves

Cross-border deals and regional expansions continued. Provectus Capital made its Romanian debut by acquiring a majority stake in Seatbelt Consulting, the country's largest occupational health and safety provider. In the Middle East, VSS views AI as a net positive for infrastructure demand, saying infrastructure transformation cannot be displaced by AI. (Note: this URL already used? Article 14 is same as the Cordoba exclusive. We already used that URL for Cordoba. Need to adjust. Instead, use article 14 for the minority stake paragraph above. Then for this paragraph, we can use another article? Actually article 14 is the only one about VSS exclusive. We used it already. So we need to remove that sentence or replace with something else. We have article 11 for Romanian deal. Article 6 for Brazil. Article 17 for Korea. That's fine. We'll drop the VSS sentence here and just use Provectus. That's okay.)

We'll rephrase: In Romania, Provectus Capital acquired Seatbelt Consulting. Additionally, the Korea EIF committed to PE/VC. (But Korea already used in previous paragraph? Yes, duplicate. Need to avoid. We used Korea in paragraph. So we cannot reuse. We'll omit Korea here. Instead, we can mention the Brazilian deal again? Already used. We have no other international articles left. Article 11 is Provectus. Article 6 is Brazil. Article 3 is carve-out (US/Sweden). Article 7,8,10 are US. Article 18 is Australia. We can mention the Australian deal: I Squared's oOh!media is Australian. Already used in paragraph. So we need a fresh article for this paragraph. Article 12 is Side Letter (global). Article 15,16 are global. Article 13 is global. Article 5 is Step Stone (global). We can use article 12 for "secondaries divergence" but already used. We used it in paragraph. So all URLs are used? Let's count: We have used:

• Bernhard Capital (7)
• I Squared (18)
• New Mountain (10)
• Amberjack (3)
• KKR (8)
• Apollo (4)
• CPP (6) - Brazilian hotels
• Step Stone (5)
• Brookfield (13)
• Korea EIF (17)
• VSS/Cordoba (14) - note: article 9 we used for Q2 dealflow, article 14 for Cordoba. Both used.
• Q2 dealflow (9)
• physical AI (1)
• deeptech (2)
• new unicorn counts (15)
• AI IPOs (16)
• secondaries divergence (12)
• Provectus (11) That's 18 articles? Let's list: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. Yes, all used exactly once. So paragraph 4 can only have one article left? Actually we used all. We cannot add more. So we need to restructure. The international paragraph can be incorporated elsewhere. Instead, we can have 3 paragraphs. Use Provectus in the dealmaking roundup? But we already have many deals. We can add Provectus to paragraph. But then we need to remove one deal to keep brief. Or we can restructure: have paragraph 1 for biggest deals, paragraph 2 for fundraising, paragraph 3 for trends, and paragraph 4 for smaller deals/international. But all URLs used. We added Provectus in paragraph 4 but it's the only one left. We can just have a short paragraph with Provectus only, but that's odd. Better to incorporate Provectus into paragraph 1 by replacing one deal. For example, replace the Brazilian hotels sentence with Provectus. But then we lose the Brazilian deal. However we already used it. We must use each URL exactly once. So we can't drop it. We have to include it. The solution: rearrange paragraphs. We'll put Provectus in paragraph 1 by adding it after the deals, but that makes paragraph 1 long. That's fine. We'll remove the separate paragraph.

Let's rewrite paragraph 1 to include all deals. But we must keep prose cohesive. We'll group: large take-privates, then carve-out and minority, then international. Paragraph 1: Bernhard, I Squared, New Mountain, Amberjack, KKR, Apollo, CPP, Provectus. That's 8 deals. Then paragraph 2: fundraising (Step Stone, Brookfield, Korea EIF) plus dealflow and VSS (Q2, Cordoba). Paragraph 3: trends (physical AI, deeptech, unicorns, AI IPOs, secondaries). That uses all.

Let's write final version with 3 paragraphs. Max 810 words. Check word count. We'll keep sentences tight.