Carlyle named a new boss; KKR embarked on a insurer-merger makeover; Apollo Global Management  touted its rise to debt-printing machine. The era of high interest rates choked off deals, cut into earnings, but saw a flowering of strategic shifts among buyout shops. The industry’s giants now all have a story to tell about why they’re on stronger footing. As the U.S. Federal Reserve loosens its stranglehold, the strategic mania should ease. But as they’re showing, buyouts still matter. Harvey Schwartz, now a year into the top job at Carlyle, on Wednesday unveiled turnaround targets, joining his major rivals in crystallizing a big-picture

Adam Neumann knows three things. He knows how to encourage investors to value a company at a ridiculous price. He knows how to get himself paid. He also, having founded the now-bankrupt WeWork, knows something about office real estate. Neumann wants his new investment firm to buy his former brainchild out of restructuring and is irritated WeWork’s new managers aren’t giving him a chance, according to a letter published by the New York Times on Tuesday. WeWork’s new guard could perhaps use a believer like Neumann. It just can’t be Neumann. The company, once valued at $47 billion, is a prime example

Leveraged buyouts have become a drag. KKR, Carlyle and others are enduring a slump in the wheeling and dealing of companies because of higher interest rates and tumbling valuations while emergent businesses in credit, real estate and infrastructure generate more of the steadier fees desired by investors in publicly traded shares of private equity firms. Blackstone’s latest fund tries to crack this new code. In a sense, the $150 billion shop led by Steve Schwarzman is refocusing on its roots. Blackstone once relied almost exclusively on raising captive pools of money from big pension and sovereign wealth funds for buyouts. The new

In a yield-hungry world, the attraction of infrastructure has long been apparent. In a warming and resource-constrained world, the need to link this to sustainable goals is becoming equally so. The connection between climate transition and infrastructure investment has recently been highlighted through US President-Elect Joe Biden’s support for the Green New Deal, and in the UK by the prime minister’s sustainable spending commitments. Coupling infrastructure with sustainability is nothing new. In 2017, the United Nations highlighted that about USD90trn would be needed over the next 15 years for global infrastructure—more than the value of the entire existing stock. That’s

Patrick Drahi’s financial engineering makes Europe’s other telecom bosses seem idle. A 30 billion euro debt pile admittedly forces the founder and controlling shareholder of Altice to be creative. The tycoon has nonetheless come out top from his latest sale. Altice on Friday said it had agreed to sell just under half of a unit that’s building fast-broadband lines in France to funds managed by insurers Allianz  and AXA and a Canadian pension manager for 1.8 billion euros. The unit will build connections reaching at least 1 million homes each year for the next four years, focusing on less populous regions of France.

U.K.-based fund house, M&G Investments, launched the M&G Global Listed Infrastructure Fund in October of 2017. In this podcast, its fund manager, Alex Araujo, outlines the philosophy and process of the fund, the expertise M&G has in this area and argues the case for listed infrastructure within a client portfolio. Alex also considers the yield potential of the asset class, its diversification benefits and how the global listed infrastructure market has evolved since 2008. He discusses the recent Carillion collapse and where listed infrastructure stands within the ESG and passive investing framework. Finally, Alex considers the potential tailwinds and headwinds