Private Equity’s Significant Debt Problem Has Been Building For Years

The warning signs have been accumulating for years. Private equity firms have acquired companies with heavy borrowing. Lenders have extended credit to increasingly leveraged businesses, while some borrowers have relied on refinancing, debt extensions and payment-in-kind interest to manage their obligations. Now hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to private equity-backed companies are coming due, sharpening those longstanding concerns. READ MORE

Private equity's political problem

If Democrats gain full control of Congress next week, as many polls and prediction markets suggest they will, private equity could once again find itself in the political crosshairs.

The big picture: Private equity has become a rhetorical punching bag for a number of Democratic House and Senate candidates, including in debates and on the stump, as an affordability bête noire. READ MORE

Sponsors sit out M&A recovery in Q3 results

The M&A recovery continues to gather pace, but not to the benefit of private markets.

Speaking on the Goldman Sachs earnings call, CEO David Solomon said that “Year to date, sponsor share of announced M&A remains below historical averages.” Goldman Sachs reported a record $1.65bn in advisory fees for its Q3 results, up 18 per cent YoY.

“It’s very clear to all of us that it’s the strategic real corporate universe that’s leading the [corporate finance] life cycle,” said Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick on an earnings call. The bank reported $887m in advisory revenue for the quarter, up 30 per cent YoY. READ MORE

SEC Proposes Eliminating Important Safeguard Against Private Equity Bribes, Putting Pensions at Risk

The SEC is proposing to get rid of the “pay-to-play” rule, which prohibits asset managers from providing services to a government client (including state and local public pensions) for two years after making a political contribution to certain elected officials or candidates. If successful, the SEC would eliminate an important safeguard against private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds bribing their way into lucrative contracts and exposing pension plans — and the workers and retirees who depend on them for their retirement security — to harm. READ MORE

Aligning M&A And Transformation After A Private Equity Deal

For businesses undergoing private equity investment, the period immediately after an acquisition is often one of intense change. In a carve-out, a new standalone business may need to be built quickly. In an integration, two organizations, systems and operating models must come together.

At the same time, another major program may already be underway. A turnaround, cost reduction or transformation program can be essential to delivering the investment case. The pressure to grow or return to profitability quickly can be considerable. READ MORE

The Real Way to Evaluate Private Equity Performance

Buying a company is the easy part. The real work comes after you own it: the years of active value creation that turn an acquisition into a return. The exit isn’t an afterthought; it’s the proof.

Recent industry data suggests some sponsors lack the consistency and discipline to navigate today’s exit environment, and it can be easy to extrapolate this divergence into a characterization of the entire industry. However, as our co-CEO Scott Nuttall recently said, “averages lie.” READ MORE

The IPO drought is driving private equity-owned companies to the debt market to pay investors

Private equity funds are increasingly pushing their portfolio companies to take on more debt to return cash to their investors, data suggests.

It comes as the typical ways of monetizing private equity investments — selling company stakes via IPOs, or offloading them to other PE funds or buyers — have dried up in recent years. READ MORE

New private funds raise $96bn in September as PE capital more than doubles

More than 2,300 new private funds reported raising $96.1 billion in September, bringing year-to-date fundraising across new and existing private funds to $1.3 trillion, according to data collected and analyzed by Convergence.

The increase came despite a 44.7% decline in new private credit fund issuance to 26 funds in September. Year to date, private credit funds in their initial fundraising stage raised $28.9 billion, down 20% from the same period in 2025. READ MORE

PE/VC campaign contributions lean toward Republicans

Private equity and venture capital aren't leaning into a Blue Wave, according to an Axios analysis of campaign donations made by political action committees affiliated with the American Investment Council and National Venture Capital Association.

Why it matters: Political alignment could impact issues like expanded retail investor access to alt investments, crypto market structure, qualified investment definitions, and AI regulation. READ MORE

Private Equity Blocked From Buying Stakes in Tennessee Law Firms

Tennessee’s Supreme Court declined to allow private equity and other investors to directly buy stakes in the state’s law firms, while signaling openness to other regulatory changes related to the practice of law.

The court in an Oct. 2 order said it will not change the state’s ban on non-lawyer ownership of law firms, maintaining widely observed US limitations on who can own and profit from legal services. The decision is a contrast to the minority of US states where law firms owned by non-lawyer investors, such as Arizona’s alternative business structures (ABSs), have their Supreme Courts’ blessing. READ MORE

U.S. Private Equity Trends and Developments

The US private equity industry enters the second half of 2026 amid a landscape defined by structural evolution, regulatory recalibration, and the continued maturation of alternative investment strategies. While fundraising remains constrained relative to the 2021 peak, secondary transactions have surged to record levels, continuation vehicles have become a primary liquidity mechanism, and private credit has expanded well beyond direct lending into a multi-strategy asset class. Meanwhile, the regulatory environment has shifted meaningfully under new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) leadership, and the push to democratise retail investor access to private markets is reshaping fund structures and compliance considerations. READ MORE

Who Owns The Learning? Private Equity’s Next Governance Problem Is Portfolio Intelligence

​I have spent much of my career leading technology and transformation programs where protecting data was treated as a fundamental part of good governance. We controlled who could access it, where it could move and how it could be used. AI has made me question whether that boundary is still sufficient.

The question I believe boards, CIOs and private equity investors now need to confront is not simply who owns the data but who owns what an AI system learns from it. READ MORE

Private Equity Reshaping the Economy

Lawmakers Target Private Equity Greed

This month saw the re-introduction of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, a bill that would (among other things) require PE firms to be responsible for the debt burdens of the companies they control, increase transparency about the management fees they charge, and create new protections for workers and consumers. CEPR’s Eileen Appelbaum pointed out that it also cracks down on common tactics that have devastated health care providers: 

“The Stop Wall Street Looting Act removes the ability of private equity funds to extract cash from companies they acquire via sale-leaseback deals, dividend recapitalizations, and monitoring fees. These legal but unscrupulous practices enrich PE firms and their investors. But they undermine the financial stability of the companies they acquire, squeeze their workers, and reduce the quality of their products and services, hurting employees, customers, and communities.” READ MORE

Everyone Hates Private Equity. Trump Is Bailing It Out.

President Donald Trump picked an odd political moment to remove guardrails from the private equity industry. A July poll commissioned by Americans for Financial Reform found that a 65 percent majority agreed with the statement, “We need guard rails for Wall Street firms like private equity because otherwise they maximize short term profits for themselves, cut jobs, and reduce the quality of products and services.” There was surprisingly little partisan difference on this point. A 59 percent majority of Republicans agreed with a 78 percent majority of Democrats. READ MORE

The Portfolio CFO’s Role in Private Equity Value Creation

Ask any sponsor which hire matters most after the CEO, and most will say the CFO. Yet many portfolio companies still treat the finance seat as a reporting role. In today's market, that gap is expensive.

Holding periods are longer and exit windows are less predictable. As a result, returns increasingly depend on how the business runs, not on financial engineering. The CFO sits at that intersection, turning the investment thesis into day-to-day decisions. READ MORE

Private Equity: Six Key Considerations for Investors

With public equity markets near all-time highs and the future uncertain, we believe private equity can be a meaningful path to building wealth over time. It offers the chance to be an active owner with direct control over how value is created across a more diversified opportunity set.

For investors considering an allocation, or revisiting one, the considerations below are a good place to start a conversation about where the opportunity sits now. READ MORE

Private Equity Takes a Harder Look at Leadership Assessment

Private equity firms examine every line of the financial model and pressure-test the commercial thesis from multiple angles. However, an assessment of the leadership team is often the least rigorous part of diligence. Deal teams will spend weeks validating a revenue forecast and only a matter of hours forming a view on the CEO expected to deliver it, according to a recent report from ECA Partners’ Samantha Martinez. “The consequence shows up after close,” the study explained. “A thesis that depended on a management team’s ability to move fast stalls because the team was never built for the pace PE demands. By the time the gap gets discovered, options are narrow and the clock has already begun.”

“Leadership is a pre-close risk workstream, not a post-close discovery,” the ECA Partners report said. “The firms that treat management due diligence with the same rigor they apply to financial and commercial diligence de-risk execution before they own the asset, and they walk into day one with a talent plan already built.” READ MORE