Happy Monday! Another week has kicked off with some fundraising news from our own Preeti Singh about Providence Strategic Growth Capital Partners’ ambitious goal for its newest flagship fund. The firm joins a steady stream of investors looking to refill their coffers as the economy continues to show signs of recovery. Also in the news, South Korean music company that manages K-pop group BTS is acquiring private-equity backed Ithaca Holdings for roughly $1 billion.

Read on for more on these and other stories...

Providence Strategic Growth Capital Partners is pitching investors on a new $4 billion fund, according to people familiar with the fundraising, which would make it the firm’s largest fund should it reach that target, Preeti Singh reports for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The new fund, called PSG V LP, would be double the size of predecessor Providence Strategic Growth IV LP, which closed with $2 billion in September 2019. Providence Strategic Growth is the former growth-equity arm of media- and communications-focused firm Providence Equity Partners.

Carlyle Group Inc. is selling its minority interest in media company Ithaca Holdings, which is being acquired in its entirety by South Korean company HYBE for more than $1 billion, Matt Grossman reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The deal includes entertainment company SB Projects and Big Machine Label Group, a U.S. recording company. Publicly traded HYBE, which manages K-pop group BTS, was formerly known as Big Hit Entertainment and includes video, education and game-production units.

Hertz tapped a consortium made up of Centerbridge Partners LP, Warburg Pincus LLC and Dundon Capital Partners LLC. The proposal was selected over a rival bid from Knighthead Capital Management LLC and Certares Management LLC in a competitive process, according to papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

Fortress Investment Group is backing the conversion of a retired coal-fired power station into a solar energy generation and storage site by the J-Power USA Development Co. unit of Tokyo-based Electric Power Development Co.  The Birchwood generating station in Virginia’s King George County shut down last month, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. It was jointly owned by J-Power and General Electric Co., which in 2017 said it would make the plant a showcase for cleaner coal power. 

Vestar Capital Partners is leading a $100 million investment in health insurance holding company Friday Health Plans Inc. Leadenhall Capital Partners in London has agreed to provide an additional $60 million in debt financing.  

Bridgepoint Group has agreed to acquire fruit genetics company Sun World International LLC, investing alongside management, as current backers Renewable Resources Group and Vision Ridge Partners exit.  

Bain Capital said on Twitter that it led a $155 million investment in shaving products company Harry’s Inc. The communique linked to a Forbes article indicating that Macquarie Capital participated in the Series E round that valued the New York-based company at about $1.7 billion.

Financial services-focused Genstar Capital in San Francisco has invested in U.S. insurance broker Amwins Group Inc. through its sale of wholesale insurance distributor Worldwide Facilities to Charlotte, N.C.-based Amwins.  

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

A blank-check company tied to Callaway Capital Management and Weiss Asset Management plans to raise $125 million through an initial public offering of shares, a regulatory filing shows. The SPAC is led by Blackstone Group Inc. advisor Kemal Kaya and Callaway founder Daniel Freifeld.

The U.K.’s market regulator plans to tighten the rules around public stock offerings by special-purpose acquisition companies, Bérengère Sim reports for Private Equity News in London. The Financial Conduct Authority expects to publish its new regulations by early summer and aims to strengthen investor protections with the move. The FCA review follows a report that recommended dropping a current rule that effectively keeps the London market on the sidelines while the demand for blank-check company listings has soared in New York.

Pioneer Natural Resources Co.’s $6.4 billion cash and stock deal to acquire DoublePoint Energy LLC provides an exit to Apollo Global Management Inc. and Quantum Energy Partners, who formed the company in 2018 through the merger of FourPoint Energy LLC and Double Eagle Energy Holdings III LLC. Magnetar Capital had backed Double Eagle alongside Apollo and Blackstone Group Inc.’s credit arm provided financing to Fort Worth, Texas-based DoublePoint when it increased its credit capacity a year ago. The deal signals renewed interest in U.S. oil patch assets, Collin Eaton writes for The Wall Street Journal.

Providence Strategic Growth Capital Partners has agreed to sell financial technology company Pineapple Payments to Fiserv Inc. The Boston-based firm initially backed the Pittsburgh company in 2017.

Secondaries firm Whitehorse Liquidity Partners has collected about $3.83 billion so far for its Whitehorse Liquidity Partners IV LP, according to a regulatory filing. Toronto-based Whitehorse had sought $3 billion for the fund, WSJ Pro Private Equity reported last year. The firm invests in preferred equity secondary deals, or deals in which it purchases preferred securities in underlying private-equity assets. The capital collected so far makes the new fund nearly twice the size of its predecessor vehicle, which closed with $2 billion in October 2019.

Partners Capital Investment Group has collected more than $231.6 million so far for its Partners Capital Merlin Co-Investment Fund II LP, a regulatory filing shows. The firm, which describes itself as an outsourced investment office for people including fund managers, said it received its first commitment to the private-equity fund last month and, as of Wednesday, had 37 investors.  

Hosen Capital in Beijing has closed its third dollar-denominated buyout fund with $800 million in commitments. Hosen said investments from the new fund, Hosen Private Equity III LP, will continue the firm’s focus on the food products and consumer sectors.

Warburg Pincus has applied to set up a securities joint venture in China, Reuters reported, citing regulatory filings in Beijing. The New York private-equity firm submitted an application for a brokerage joint venture. A Warburg spokeswoman declined to comment.

U.S. hiring surged in March as the recovery accelerated, the start of what economists say could be a sustained run of job growth benefiting industries, regions and workers hardest hit during the pandemic, Eric Morath writes in The Wall Street Journal. Employers added a seasonally adjusted 916,000 jobs last month, the best gain since August, according to Labor Department figures, and the unemployment rate, determined by a separate survey, fell to 6%, a pandemic low. Still, as of March, there were 8.4 million fewer U.S. jobs than in February 2020 before the pandemic hit.

Newly public electric-vehicle startups have raised money by pitching plans for rapid growth over the past year, Eliot Brown writes in The Wall Street Journal. But now some are missing targets, adding costs and, in one case, upending major parts of a business model.

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