Private Equity News

Waning investor appetite for sustainable investment funds has dampened ESG fund revenues for a second year running, with low single-digit increases marking an end to a boom which saw management fees increase by more than 300%.

Citigroup’s top dealmaker covering private equity firms is set to depart after more than 10 years as the US bank makes a major push in to gain ground in financial sponsors. 

“It needed urgent attention.” The private equity firm that owns The Body Shop reveals its plans for the retailer and its wider ambitions in the beauty, wellness and longevity market.

ICYMI: Industry heavyweight Jean-Pierre Saad is joining CVC to focus on technology deals, according to people familiar with the matter. A computer engineer by training who is known to his colleagues as ‘JP’, Saad joined KKR in 2008 after working as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers. He rose up the ranks to lead TMT activities for KKR within the European private equity platform. Deals that Saad worked on included investments into German software supply chain company Körber and Swiss IT company SoftwareOne. 

When Aurea rescued The Body Shop from administration last summer, the question on everybody’s lips was: who is Aurea? Now, its co-founders Mike Jatania and Paul Raphael open up about the reasons behind the retail takeover as well as their grander business ambition: to build a multi-billion-dollar asset manager specialising in beauty, wellness and longevity.

The dizzying rise of lawyers’ salaries could intensify further as global elite law firms battle for talent to advise major clients on complex deals, A&O Shearman managing partner Hervé Ekué tells Shruti Tripathi Chopra.

Exclusive: KKR’s former head of European technology, media, and telecom (TMT) deals is set to join CVC, according to people familiar with the matter.

Deutsche Bank and its fund arm DWS Group are bolstering their private credit offering with a tie-up to cash in on the booming asset class. “Private credit is a key offering for our clients who are looking for exposure to real-economy investments,” DWS chief executive Stefan Hoops said.

Bankers are starting to doubt all of their assumptions about Trump. The received wisdom on Wall Street was that if the markets reacted badly to his actions, Trump would do whatever was necessary to repair the damage. But confidence in the ‘Trump put’ has largely evaporated, so the deals slump may last for some time.

J.P. Morgan has bolstered its coverage of infrastructure private equity by hiring a former Citigroup veteran to lead the team in Europe. Francisco Abularach has been hired by the Wall Street bank as head of infrastructure for Europe, the Middle East and Africa within its strategic investors group.