Private Equity Spotlight

What happens when a sale falls apart? Industry leaders explore how to diagnose a stalled exit, gather candid feedback, reset management, tackle regulatory hurdles, and rebuild momentum. They also consider alternative routes such as partial sales, minority investments, strategic partnerships, or waiting for stronger results, while examining how setbacks can become opportunities to strengthen the business and find the right buyer.

A successful exit depends on far more than financial performance. This discussion explores building and aligning management teams, preventing deal exhaustion, retaining key talent, communicating with customers, and expanding the circle of trust at the right time. It also examines how to assess buyers for cultural fit, leadership compatibility, and their treatment of management under pressure.

When is the right moment to sell? Private equity experts explore the value-creation sweet spot, crafting a compelling equity story, and preparing for intense buyer scrutiny. Topics include reducing diligence friction, cybersecurity and technology readiness, cultivating buyers before launch, and a 15-times-EBITDA infrastructure exit. The discussion also challenges rigid timetables in favor of building businesses worth holding indefinitely.

A practical look at reverse-engineering investments from likely exit scenarios. Industry experts explore buyer expectations, strategic versus IPO exits, management upgrades, recurring revenue, and evidence of scalable performance. The discussion also covers technology, data infrastructure, cybersecurity, early buyer engagement, and how to build a credible value-creation story from day one.

What makes a company irresistible to its next buyer? Industry experts explore buyer-focused exits, from underwriting growth and mapping value to strategic versus sponsor acquirers, to building a credible equity story. The discussion also covers saleable technology, AI governance, cyber risk, and why proven upside, honest positioning, and long-term relationships can shape negotiations.

Young Lee, managing director at Abbott Capital, evaluates private-market managers and portfolios. Jack Purcell, managing partner at Ridgemont Equity Partners, brings 25 years of partnership and investment experience. They explore fund growth versus strategy drift, credible valuations, genuine operating expertise, secondary sales, personnel changes, and why succession planning is crucial during fundraising.

Bill Myers, Washington correspondent covering regulatory trends; Theodore Edwards, private funds lawyer focused on fiduciary duties; Colleen Fay, advisor on fees, expenses and compliance. They unpack growing SEC scrutiny of fees, how managers handle cost allocation and disclosures, ambiguity around continuation vehicles, preparations for retail capital, and AI’s role and risks in fee-related operations.

This year's Global Investor 150 – Private Equity International's annual ranking of the largest private equity LPs in the world based on the fair market value of their PE investment portfolios – reveals a total of $2.88 trillion was allocated to the asset class by the featured investors as of end-December 2025. This represents an increase of almost 9 percent on the previous year. Investors appeared to prioritise long-term strategy over short-term market conditions, maintaining confidence in private equity despite a challenging fundraising and exit environment. Rather than stepping back from the asset class, many are refining how they deploy capital, with greater interest in the mid-market and increasingly sophisticated portfolio construction strategies. PEI Group’s senior content producer Evie Rusman was joined by Carmela Mendoza and Katrina Lau, both senior reporters at PEI, to break down the findings and explore what this signals about the private equity landscape. This is the fourth episode in PEI Group’s new Data Dive miniseries, where we dig into our proprietary data, surveys and rankings, as well as recent market data sets, to understand what investors and fund managers are thinking, where capital is moving and how the asset class is evolving. Stay tuned for the next episode, which will provide insight into affiliate title Private Funds CFO’s Fees and Expenses 2026 Survey.

In the world of European venture capital, very few names carry the same weight as Dame Anne Glover. She co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners in 1997 when the idea of a dedicated British deep-tech investment firm was, by most accounts, a little eccentric. London–headquartered Amadeus has backed more than 200 companies over its almost three-decade-long history. Glover herself has chaired both the UK and European private capital associations and this year was awarded a DBE – one of the highest honours in the British system – for outstanding contributions to science and engineering. In this episode, we sit in on a live conversation – recorded at PEI Group’s London headquarters for a PEI Presents discussion – between Dame Anne Glover and senior editor Adam Le. Topics include: the persistent gap in the UK's funding ladder, the untapped potential of British defined contribution pension schemes, what the AI boom means for investors, and the "SaaSpocalypse."

Defence investing has been one of the hottest topics in European private equity over the past year. Firms including Warburg Pincus, PEI Group owner Bridgepoint, Carlyle Group and Tikehau Capital have all launched strategies or are mulling them, while LPs such as AkademikerPension, PensionDanmark, M&G Investments, PenSam and Finnish pension insurer Varma have either already invested in PE defence strategies or are considering doing so. In this episode, senior editor Adam Le sits down with EMEA editor for investor intelligence Joe Marsh to delve into the types of strategies LPs are looking for in the defence arena; the challenges that come with exiting defence assets; the role that ESG plays in LPs' investment policies; and why the themes of security, sovereignty and resilience are increasingly on investors' minds. Find all Private Equity International's defence-related coverage here.