BAIG Weekly News Roundup #2

Money is moving again. PE firms are selling companies at a pace we haven't seen in years, and big funds are still raising billions even in a tough market. Warburg Pincus is cashing out at a record pace, Sycamore is lining up a $9 billion sale, and TPG just raised $10 billion in a tough fundraising market. Private credit's redemption scare is starting to cool off too, and Bain is finally jumping into U.S. data centers after years on the sidelines. Here are the five headlines worth knowing this week.

Warburg Pincus has pulled in about $12 billion from exits so far this year. That already ties its record for all of 2025, and there's still a quarter left. Some of the big ones were aerospace supplier Consolidated Precision Products and a partial sale of Ensemble Health Partners.

Why care? For the past few years, PE firms have had a hard time selling companies and getting cash back to their investors. IPOs dried up and valuations got tough to defend. Warburg putting up numbers like this is another sign that exits might be picking back up, at least for big firms with plenty of ways to sell.

Sources: Reuters

Investors asked to pull $4.2 billion out of two Blue Owl private credit funds in Q3. That's down from $4.7 billion in Q2 and a record $5.4 billion earlier this year. Blue Owl's flagship credit fund also saw fewer withdrawal requests.

This is a big deal because private credit funds hold loans that can't be sold quickly. If too many people want out at once, the fund just can't pay everyone right away. There are still real worries about liquidity, loose underwriting, and borrowers that are struggling. But fewer people heading for the exit is a decent sign that things are settling down.

Sources: Reuters

Fundraising is tough right now, but the big names are still pulling it off. TPG raised $10 billion for TPG Rise Climate II, its second climate-focused PE fund. It invests in private companies in clean energy, EVs, and sustainable materials, and follows the first fund TPG launched in 2021.

We keep seeing the same thing play out. Investors are putting their money with the biggest, most established managers, and smaller firms are having a harder time raising.

Sources: Bloomberg

Sycamore took Walgreens private last year, and now it looks like it's ready to cash in on part of it. The firm is in advanced talks to sell UK retailer Boots to the Canadian branch of the billionaire Weston family. The deal could value Boots at around $9 billion.

Nothing's signed yet. But if it goes through, it's a textbook buyout move. Buy a big, complicated company, then sell the pieces off one by one for more than you paid for the whole thing.

Sources: GuruFocus

For the most part, Bain Capital has sat out the U.S. data center boom. Now it's in. Bain is one of the bidders for Edged, a data center company owned by Koch, in a deal that could value it at over $15 billion. If it happens, it'd be Bain's first big PE bet on U.S. data centers.

The timing is what makes this interesting. Late last year, Bain managing partner David Gross was warning about a "massive arms race" of money flowing into AI infrastructure. Since then the concerns have only gotten louder. Towns are pushing back, power and water are hard to come by, and deals are using a lot of debt. Oracle even used a force majeure clause on a New Mexico project to cover itself in case the site isn't done on time. Bain is going in anyway, which tells you how hard it is for big PE firms to stay out of this space.

Up to now, Bain played data centers from the side. In the U.S. it backed companies that help data centers run, like Nutanix and Coherent, plus a venture stake in Crusoe and a credit deal with DC Blox. The actual building has happened in Europe and Asia, including HSCALE, a joint venture covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Sources: Bloomberg

● Exit – When a PE firm sells a company it owns, turning paper gains into actual cash for its investors. Common routes include selling to another company, selling to another PE firm, or taking it public through an IPO.
● Partial sale – Selling only part of a stake in a company instead of the whole thing. It lets a firm return some cash to investors while keeping upside if the company keeps growing.
● Redemption request – When an investor asks a fund to give their money back. Many private credit funds cap these at around 5% per quarter, so not everyone gets paid out right away.
● Liquidity – How quickly an asset can be turned into cash without losing value. Private loans are illiquid, which is why redemption waves put pressure on private credit funds.
● Underwriting – The process a lender uses to judge whether a borrower can pay back a loan. "Loose underwriting" means lenders went easy on standards to win deals.
● Fund vintage – The year a fund starts investing. Firms usually raise a new version of the same strategy every few years, like TPG Rise Climate I and II.
● Take-private – When a PE firm buys all the shares of a public company and pulls it off the stock market, like Sycamore did with Walgreens.
● Force majeure – A contract clause that frees a party from its obligations when events outside its control get in the way, like disasters or major delays.
● Joint venture (JV) – A business two or more companies create together and share ownership of, like Bain's HSCALE data center venture with Aquila Group.

This Week’s Writer & Curator:

Jacky Lin