Private Equity 3 Days

Last updated: August 9, 2026, 5:40 AM ET

Mega-Deals & Take-Privates

The biggest headline this week is Apollo's recommended cash offer for easyJet, valuing the FTSE 100 airline at approximately £5.7bn at the end of a fast-moving four-week bidding contest. The deal is emblematic of a broader trend: ‘bear hugs’ are on the rise in UK take-privates, as activist pressure and valuation gaps drive unsolicited approaches. Separately, Partners Group has agreed to acquire a majority stake in AVK Power Solutions, a Maidenhead-based provider of power systems for data centers that has delivered more than 20,000 projects and installed approximately 3.5GW of power across Europe's FLAP-D markets. Carlyle is picking up a minority stake in Prime Capital Financial from Abry Partners, exiting one of the fastest-growing independent wealth management firms in the US after three years of concentrated growth. In the energy space, Sunoco is acquiring Court Square-backed Offen Petroleum for $600m; the target distributes approximately 2.5 billion gallons of fuel annually to about 7,000 customers. LS Power is acquiring the Brazos Valley gas-fired power plant from Constellation in a transaction that satisfies a regulatory divestiture commitment tied to Constellation's 2025 acquisition of Calpine. Veritas Capital is acquiring Greenbelt-backed Saber Power Services, a vertically integrated power infrastructure services platform. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Asset Management is lining up data center contractor Divcon for sale, and Broad Sky has closed the sale of professional services firm Smith + Howard to TPG after growing it 4x during its ownership.

Healthcare & Pharma

Private equity activity in healthcare services remains intense. Wise Equity has inked an agreement to acquire a majority stake in E-Pharma Trento, which may explore bolt-on acquisitions to add new technologies or enhance manufacturing capacity. Eir Partners has invested in Claims Bridge and supported the add-on of Dialysis PPO, with plans to scale the platform organically and inorganically. Tortuga Growth Partners has invested in Advanced eClinical Training out of its Fund I. In the clinical workforce space, a wave of PE firms including Accel-KKR, Bain and Knox Lane are betting on technology-driven services, with eight deals highlighted in the sector. Ares Management is leading a $2.2bn private credit package to finance Med Impact Holdings' planned acquisition of Puerto Rico-based Medical Card System. The Nordic radiopharma space also saw a deal as Nordic Capital (already used above? Wait, we need to use each URL exactly once. The URL for article 6 is the same as the one for radiopharma? Actually article 6 is a PE Hub article that covers both clinical workforce and radiopharma. We already used that URL for the clinical workforce mention. So we cannot use it again for radiopharma. We need to find another mention. But article 6 is the only one covering that radiopharma deal. We should have used it only once. Let's adjust: we'll mention the clinical workforce first with that URL, and then for radiopharma we can note that it's part of the same article but we cannot link again. Alternatively, we can link the radiopharma mention to a different article that covers it? There is no other. So we must avoid double linking. We'll skip the radiopharma detail or integrate it into the first link. But we already used the link for clinical workforce. To keep each URL once, we can mention the radiopharma deal in the same sentence but only link the clinical workforce phrase. That's fine. We'll do: "Accel-KKR, Bain and Knox Lane are among PE firms targeting clinical workforce services and radiopharma, as seen in Nordic Capital's deal." That uses the URL once. Good.

Infrastructure & Energy

The infrastructure PE space is bustling. Partners Group (already used above? We used that URL for the AVK Power deal. That's fine, it's used once. We can't reuse. So we need to avoid mentioning Partners Group again in this section. Instead, we mention other deals. LS Power (already used above). Sunoco (used). Veritas (used). We need to use the remaining infrastructure-related URLs: Arlington-backed TRP closing five add-on deals to form a new highway plastics division called Gulf Highway Materials. Nexa Equity-backed Facility Grid acquires autonomous commissioning company Ping Cx, introducing a new product strategy. GSAM lining Divcon (used). Broad Sky (used). RedBird’s Affinia adds Wilson Partners in UK accounting tie-up. Copley Equity-backed FMG Leading snaps up Broadbranch Advisors. MPK Equity-backed Gorgeous Collective acquires Clean Your Dirty Face. Verdane makes a majority investment in Factbird, a Danish IoT and recurring software company for manufacturing intelligence. We'll group these under a smaller header.

Secondary Markets & Continuation Vehicles

The secondary market is seeing landmark activity. Pantheon has bought $523m of BlackRock TCP Capital's private credit book in a landmark BDC continuation vehicle, with pricing at 95% of gross fair value as of 31 December 2025. The same deal is covered as Pantheon backs BlackRock BDC’s credit CV, which will house over $500m of debt positions. On the venture side, G Squared has secured $2.3bn for its seventh flagship fund, about twice the size of its previous vehicle and raised in half the time. The single-asset secondaries market in infrastructure is blooming, but discipline and entry valuations remain critical, according to Stafford's William. GP-leds have dominated the secondaries market in H1, driven by fundraising and expansion into new asset classes. The hold period of a continuation vehicle is an imperfect metric for assessing the burden. Danish pension Industriens Pension is mulling adding more infrastructure secondaries exposure, preferring indirect over direct investment.

Fundraising & LP Trends

Mega-firms are largely defying fundraising and exit headwinds, according to Side Letter learnings from earnings. The New Jersey Division of Investment sees opportunity in a slow exit market, with CIO Shoaib Khan saying re-ups and new opportunities are being evaluated equally. Italian pension fund ENPAV has released an RFP for private equity co-investment. In Korea, MMAA is looking to commit 300bn Korean won to domestic blind-pool PE/VC funds for 2026, while Korea Post Insurance seeks 60bn Korean won for domestic blind-pool venture capital funds. Allianz posted a record operating profit for Q2, driven by €39bn of net inflows at its asset management arm, with PIMCO and AGI pushing third-party AuM to a record €2.16tn.

Venture Capital & Technology

July saw no summer doldrums for active startup investors, with Khosla and Y Combinator topping the ranks. The week's 10 biggest funding rounds featured three companies securing $1bn or more. Y Combinator is seeing a growing class of second-time founders, with a dataset of 454 repeat founders revealing interesting insights. A16z has over 30 venture scouts hunting for deals across Europe. Lendable is chasing the superapp dream, constrained more by capacity than ideas. QMUL spinouts are looking to raise. Pleo is facing a culture crisis with executive exodus and sale speculation. The top junior VCs to watch in Europe have been named by partners. The UK has expanded its talent visa to more than 100 companies.

European PE Scene & Corporate Moves

Bernard Arnault has installed Aymeric Le Clere as chairman and CEO of Financière Agache, the €3.1bn capital holding vehicle that anchors the Arnault family's control of LVMH, in a latest reshuffle. RedBird’s Affinia has added Wilson Partners in a UK accounting tie-up; Wilson Partners advises SMEs and PE investors. Copley Equity-backed FMG Leading has snapped up Broadbranch Advisors, with the deal closing at the end of July. MPK Equity-backed Gorgeous Collective acquired Clean Your Dirty Face, its first acquisition since the platform's launch earlier in 2026. Verdane made a majority investment in Factbird, a Danish IoT and recurring software company providing manufacturing intelligence services. Arlington-backed TRP Infrastructure closed five add-on deals to form a new highway plastics division called Gulf Highway Materials. Nexa Equity-backed Facility Grid acquired autonomous commissioning company Ping Cx, introducing a product strategy centered on three integrated offerings. Tortuga Growth Partners invested in Advanced eClinical Training out of Fund I.