Welcome back. Safe travels to those of you going away for this holiday weekend! 

In today's action-packed newsletter, WSJ Pro's Chris Cumming reports that for all the industry hopes, fundraising during the first half of the year fell from last year's first-half volumes, putting this year on track for the lowest annual fundraising since 2018, according to preliminary data PitchBook Data. 

Meanwhile, our own Rod James writes about a lawsuit against H.I.G. from a company founder who accuses the firm of self-dealing. An H.I.G. spokesman called the lawsuit frivolous, but the case shines a spotlight on cross-fund transactions, or deals involving transfers of investments between separate funds managed by the same firm.

Finally, The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weil looks at how Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R., N.Y.) call for the SEC to investigate Harvard University's financial disclosures puts private-equity valuations in the crosshairs. 

We have these and more. Read on…

Note to readers: WSJ Pro Private Equity will not publish on Friday, July 4, in observance of the Independence Day holiday. We will resume publication on Monday.

Private-equity managers entered this year hoping investors would finally reopen the spigot and start committing serious sums to new buyout funds. Instead, the fundraising drought has gotten worse, WSJ Pro's Chris Cumming reports. Buyout and growth funds raised $223 billion globally in the first six months of the year, below last year’s pace, when these funds closed on $551.4 billion over the full year, according to a report released Thursday by PitchBook Data, which tracks information about private markets.

A company founder is suing H.I.G. Capital and its chief executive, alleging that the $70 billion private-equity firm sold packaging business Maillis Group to itself at a value that matched a third-party bid rejected earlier by the firm as too low, WSJ Pro's Rod James reports. The lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court in Miami, shines a spotlight on what are commonly referred to as cross-fund transactions, or deals involving transfers of companies between separate funds managed by the same private-equity sponsor. An H.I.G. spokesman called the lawsuit from Dailane Investments, through which Maillis founder Michael Maillis held a minority stake in the Greece-based packaging business, “entirely frivolous.”

A call for an investigation into how Harvard University values its investments, including $23 billion in private-equity funds, could turn out to be a bazooka aimed at the entire private-markets industry, Jonathan Weil reports for the Journal. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) recently asked Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins to investigate Harvard's financial disclosures to bondholders, pointing to PE funds that "are often overvalued due to reliance on internal estimates and outdated transaction data,” and the realizable values may be substantially lower.

Buyout firm KKR & Co. in New York has topped rival Advent International in Boston with a £4.1 billion take-private offer for Spectris that gives the precision-measurement company an enterprise value of about £4.7 billion, or about $6.46 billion, the Journal's Ian Walker reports. KKR's £39.72 per-share bid topped Advent's £37.63 per share by about 5.6% before dividends and represents a 3.7% premium to Monday's closing price in London but is 96% higher than the stock's value on June 6, before the offer period began. Spectris had earlier agreed to Advent's offer but on Wednesday said it preferred KKR's higher bid. 

Buyout firm KKR & Co. is acquiring agricultural infrastructure business ProTen from the Aware Super, a superannuation fund in Australia, Megan Cheah reports for Dow Jones Newswires. ProTen focuses on working with poultry farmers to service over 700 livestock sheds on more than 60 farms. New York-based KKR is investing from its Asia Pacific Infrastructure Investors II Fund.

Infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak is committing $400 million to portfolio company Astound as part of a refinancing deal that will extend the internet, mobile and fiber-optic telecommunications company’s debt maturities out to 2029 and 2030. Stonepeak acquired Astound in 2021.

European buyout firm EQT AB has bought a collection of logistics properties in Manteca, Calif., investing through its EQT Exeter Industrial Value Fund VI. The four buildings total about 2 million square feet in California's Central Valley.

BigPoint Holding and Partners Group have led a $162 million investment in Climeworks, bringing the total capital the Swiss carbon-removal startup has raised so far to $1 billion, Yusuf Khan writes for WSJ Pro Sustainable Business. The company, which was set up in 2009 to remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere, last year pivoted its strategy to act as a buyer of credits in other forms of carbon removal, such as reforestation, enhanced rock weathering and biochar, on behalf of its customers.

Newly formed firm Altaline Capital Management has backed a strategic growth investment in Brazos Safety Systems, a provider of flight safety technology and analytics for the global aviation industry. Fort Worth, Texas-based Brazos’ systems has supported more than 300 aircraft and analyzed data from over 200,000 flights.

Bain Capital in Boston is acquiring restaurant business Sizzling Platter from fellow private-equity firm CapitalSpring in Nashville, Tenn. The company operates more than 800 fast-casual food franchises, including Dunkin’, Jersey Mike’s and Little Caesars with over 13,000 employees in the U.S. and Mexico. CapitalSpring first backed the Murray, Utah-based company in 2019.

TPG has closed its previously announced acquisition of the remaining 70% stake it didn’t already own in satellite television company DirecTV from AT&T.

Blackstone has recapitalized 25 industrial buildings in the Dallas, Houston and Chicago markets, acquiring a 95% interest in the holdings in the process. The New York asset manager invested through its Core+ funds.

Neuberger Berman’s capital solutions strategy has invested in Paradigm, a Walnut Creek, Calif.-based specialty-care-management organization that helps payors in U.S. workers' compensation and healthcare markets manage complex, high-cost cases and conditions. Neuberger Berman joins existing backers Omers Private Equity and Summit Partners, both of which are retaining stakes in the company.

Silversmith Capital Partners and Meritech Capital led a $135 million investment in Talon.One, a Berlin-based loyalty and promotion company. Existing investor venture firm CRV participated. Talon.One customers include H&M, Adidas, Costa Coffee, Sephora, Ticketmaster and Nordstrom.

Apollo Global Management is providing senior financing for a collection of U.K. industrial outdoor storage assets held by private-markets firm Centerbridge Partners and Modal, a London-based property investor and manager focused on the sector.

Buyout firm TPG Capital has closed the acquisition of the remaining 70% interest in satellite broadcaster DirecTV from telecommunications company AT&T. TPG paid AT&T about $1.8 billion in cash for a 30% stake in DirecTV in 2021 and began to jointly operate the service provider at that time. Last year, AT&T agreed to sell its remaining interest in DirecTV to TPG for roughly $7.6 billion in payments through 2029.

Our add-on deal interactive tool allows you to sort and analyze volumes of add-on deal data compiled by WSJ Pro. View more.

Odyssey Investment Partners is selling test and inspection company Applied Technical Services to strategic buyer SGS, formerly Société Générale de Surveillance, in Switzerland in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at nearly $1.33 billion, Nina Kienle reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The Marietta, Ga.-based company is expected to generate sales of $460 million and adjusted pre-tax earnings of $95 million next year. Odyssey has backed the business since December 2020, according to the firm's website.

Hamilton Lane is launching a new semiliquid fund aimed at offering private-wealth investors and institutions access to Asian private-markets investments. The Hamilton Lane Asia Private Assets Fund seeks to offer investors access to a diversified portfolio of Asian private markets with a focus on private equity through direct investments and secondary deals.

Sixth Street has raised at least $1.27 billion so far for Sixth Street Specialty Lending Europe III (A) and at least $140 million for Sixth Street Specialty Lending Europe III (B), regulatory filings indicate. In early 2021, the firm announced the closing of its previous European specialty lending fund at the fund’s upper limit of €1 billion, or roughly $1.2 billion.

Vanguard Group grew into a $10 trillion financial colossus by pioneering simple, ultralow-cost investing. Its wildly popular index funds proved that people don’t need expensive portfolio managers to pick their investments. These days, the company’s most exciting new product is a striking departure from that playbook—a foray into the world of private markets, where investors pay steep fees for access to complex deals that promise high returns, the Journal reports.

Sovereign-wealth investor Oman Investment Authority said it ended 2024 with $53 billion in assets under management. The investment authority invests across verticals: the National Development Fund, Future Generations Fund and Future Fund Oman. Nearly 20% of the sovereign-wealth fund’s investments are in North America. In 2024, the investment authority added 13 new private-equity and venture-capital investments, according to a local news report.

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