Good morning! Although fundraising for direct lending vehicles slowed this past quarter (see the Big Number in Tuesday’s newsletter), opportunistic credit appears to be holding up. One firm that has benefited is StepStone Group, which raised $1.58 billion for its latest opportunistic credit vehicle, as our own Isaac Taylor reports.

Meanwhile, I have a story based off of a panel of family office investors that discussed private markets at a conference in Zurich, and our Journal colleague Jonathan Weil explores a dilemma facing a number of publicly traded private-credit funds: whether or not to buy back shares.

Dive in for more on these stories and many more…

StepStone Group has raised over $1.58 billion for its second credit opportunities fund to provide financing for companies, fund sponsors and investors in need of cash, Isaac Taylor writes for WSJ Pro. The StepStone Credit Opportunities Fund II received more than double the firm’s $750 million target. StepStone will invest from it in strategies across the private-credit market, but is focusing on secondary transactions and co-investments. The New York firm collected the capital as private-markets investors face stresses including conditions that have made asset sales difficult, increasing demand for liquidity to pay dividends and cash out fund investors.

Family office investment managers remain interested in private markets, but some said they need to be careful placing bets in an increasingly complex landscape, WSJ Pro’s Laura Kreutzer writes. A panel of family office investors that spoke at a recent Jaboy Productions conference in Zurich, cautioned against simply following the herd into the largest managers.

Many publicly traded private-credit funds say their assets are worth more than the market is willing to pay. If they really believe that, they should be aggressively buying back their discounted shares, Jonathan Weil writes for The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column. First-quarter financial reports will likely show what level of buybacks each has undertaken and provide a crucial metric for gauging management’s conviction in their own valuations.

Buyout group EQT AB in Stockholm sweetened its cash offer for Britain's Intertek Group, valuing the London-listed business at about £8.31 billion, or roughly $11.22 billion, Mauro Orru reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The provider of supply-chain testing, inspection and certification services said EQT increased its offer to £54 a share in cash, up from the £51.50 that the company's directors rejected earlier as undervaluing the business and its future prospects. Intertek said the new proposal is being evaluated.

Buyout firm KKR & Co. is investing $1.5 billion in Vertical Bridge REIT, a real-estate investment trust that owns and operates wireless communication infrastructure across the U.S., joining backers DigitalBridge and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, or La Caisse. Vertical Bridge owns and operates more than 17,000 communications towers across the U.S. KKR's investment, through its core infrastructure strategy, builds on previous KKR deals in the communications infrastructure industry, including current holdings of Vantage Towers in Europe and Pinnacle Towers in the Philippines.

Drive Capital and Access Industries led a $1 billion growth commitment backing operating system software developer Vast Data, joined by others including Fidelity Management & Research in a deal that valued the business at $30 billion, according to the company. Vast's software is used with artificial-intelligence technology.

Centerbridge Partners has agreed to buy as much as $1.2 billion in consumer loans originated by lender Upstart Holdings, following an earlier agreement hatched in 2024. Nasdaq-listed Upstart, based in San Mateo, Calif., uses artificial-intelligence technology to match borrowers with banks and credit unions for auto loans, home equity lines of credit and refinancing existing debt.

Specialist investor SK Capital Partners in New York has acquired a controlling interest in fruit ingredients supplier Brothers International Food Holdings from Benford Capital Partners. The firm invested alongside founder Travis Betters, who remains president and chief executive of the Rochester, N.Y.-based company.

Shares of medical device maker Teleflex jumped over 10% Wednesday following reports that buyout firms GTCR and CVC Capital Partners had made a bid to take the New York-listed company private. Shares of the Wayne, Pa.-based maker of catheters and other products used in surgeries climbed over 11% to close at $138.81 Wednesday, giving the business an equity value of about $6.14 billion.

Growth equity investor FTV Capital in San Francisco is backing financial software supplier Valitana with a "significant" investment, according to an emailed news release. The Stamford, Conn.-based company's technology is used to analyze structured credit investments and to manage associated workflows and holdings.

New York-based midmarket firm Behrman Capital has acquired Metallizing Service Company Holdings, a West Hartford, Conn.-based company that provides engineered thermal spray coatings and finishing services for military, commercial aerospace and industrial gas turbine applications.

Brightstar Capital Partners has backed its first acquisition under a new lower midmarket strategy with the purchase of children’s educational products publisher Bendon Publishing International. Founder and Chief Executive Ben Ferguson will continue to lead the Ashland, Ohio-based company and retains a significant stake alongside its management team.

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

Vista Equity Partners is selling healthcare benefits-administration company Alegeus Technologies to strategic buyer UnitedHealth Group at a reported enterprise value of around $3 billion. Vista acquired the Boston-based business in 2018 from Lightyear Capital. Bloomberg News previously reported the value of the deal.

Midmarket investor H.I.G. Capital in Miami is selling clinical pharmacology and bioanalytical sciences services provider Celerion Holdings to private-equity firm THL Partners, which is acquiring a majority stake in the business. The deal is valued at $1.8 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the deal and previously reported by trade publication Axios. The clinical research organization based in Lincoln, Neb., runs trials for pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients. H.I.G. acquired Celerion in November 2022.

KSL Capital Partners has exited its stake in Southern Marinas through a sale of the marina's owner and operator to real-assets investor Stonepeak. Travel- and leisure-focused firm KSL initially backed Southern Marinas, which owns and operates a portfolio of 16 marinas across eight states, back in 2021.

Infrastructure and communications investment firm Grain Management is selling Alaskan cable systems company Quintillion to strategic buyer GCI Holdings, or Genesis Consolidated Industries. Quintillion's network is designed to link the state's remotest areas with 2,341 miles of subsea and 824 miles of terrestrial fiber-optic cable. Gain acquired the business in early 2024.

Brookwood Financial Partners-backed convenience-store chain Yesway saw its shares rise about 6.1% Wednesday after its initial public offering priced at $20 a share, the bottom of the expected range. Beverly, Mass.-based Brookwood's founder, Thomas Trkla, started Yesway in 2015 and leads the Fort Worth, Texas-based chain. Yesway operates nearly 450 stores mainly in Texas, New Mexico and South Dakota, according to a regulatory filing. The shares ended Wednesday at $21.23, giving the company an equity value of about $1.29 billion.

Adams Street Partners in Chicago has closed its Adams Street Co-Investment Fund VI and related vehicles with $2.5 billion. Investors included the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension & Retirement System, which committed $20 million in late 2024, and the Ventura County Employees’ Retirement Association in California, which kicked in $35 million in July of that year, according to the WSJ Pro Private Equity LP Commitments database. The firm with over $65 billion in assets now manages about $7.2 billion in co-investment funds.

Kinderhook Industries has raised $1.1 billion for Kinderhook Strategic Opportunities Fund I, a strategy focused on investments in smaller deals than the firm typically backs out of its flagship private-equity funds. Kinderhook itself contributed $100 million to the fund with the remainder coming from outside investors, including the New Mexico State Investment Council, which pledged up to $100 million, according to WSJ Pro’s LP Commitments database.

Hamilton Lane has established two new interval funds, including through the conversion of the Hamilton Lane Private Infrastructure Fund to an interval structure. The Conshohocken, Pa.-based firm is also offering the Hamilton Lane Credit Income Fund to institutional and wealthy individual investors in the U.S. with a minimum investment of as little as $2,500. The funds will provide limited quarterly liquidity options. The firm has collected over $350 million so far for the credit vehicle. It began offering the infrastructure fund to investors in 2024 and it had net assets of about $176.8 million at the end of March.

Partners Capital in London has appointed Zach Gaucher as a senior principal to lead the firm’s venture-capital investments out of its New York office, according to an emailed press release. Gaucher was most recently a managing director on the U.S. venture investing team at consulting firm Cambridge Associates.

Big corporate M&A is booming—and banks are earning megasize fees, Kristin Broughton reports for CFO Journal. As both corporate buyers and private-equity firms alike back larger transactions, the banks that advise them are reaping the rewards. In 2025 alone, six acquisitions of U.S. public companies included sell-side fees of at least $100 million for a single bank, according to Deal Point Data.

Software-focused Thoma Bravo and its co-investors may be at risk of losing the money they used to back customer experience management programs supplier Medallia as the private-equity firm nears an agreement to hand the business to creditors, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Thoma Bravo took the company private in late 2021 through an all-cash deal that valued the San Francisco-based business at about $6.4 billion. Reuters said Medallia owes $3 billion, and creditors include Blackstone, KKR & Co. and Apollo Global Management. Business development companies including FS KKR Capital and Apollo Debt Solutions have recently reported marking Medallia debt at 79 cents on the dollar and 74 cents on the dollar, respectively, Reuters said.

Private-equity executives are financing their operations with home mortgages and other personal debt instruments as they battle a dilemma: the pressure to commit more of their own money to ever larger funds while also waiting longer to realise current investments from their portfolios amid an exit logjam, Sebastian McCarthy reports for sister publication Private Equity News in London. The credit lines are used for things such as fund commitments and co-investments, then repaid from carried interest distributions.

Vista Equity Partners is partnering with Google Cloud to utilize Google’s artificial-intelligence tools to speed up the deployment of AI across the private-markets firm’s more than 90 portfolio companies, Vista said in an emailed statement. Vista has already begun implementing the partnership, including through insurance software provider Duck Creek Technologies, which Vista acquired in 2023 in a $2.3 billion take-private deal.

European buyout firm EQT AB ended March with slightly less assets than it managed at the end of last year's first quarter, slipping about 1.5% to €269 billion, or $315.87 billion, though fee-paying assets held steady at €142 billion, the Stockholm-based firm reported Wednesday. The firm said its Coller Capital acquisition, which is on track to close later this year, will add about €30 billion in fee-paying assets. EQT also said it is seeing strong fundraising momentum despite market volatility and geopolitical uncertainties, Dominic Chopping reports for the Journal. The firm expects to hold a first close for its 11th flagship fund in the coming months and will be raising over 10 funds this year.

Wendel has acquired a controlling 56% capital stake in midmarket investment firm Committed Advisors, with BNP Paribas Asset Management Alts participating in the deal, taking a 5.6% stake through its Prime unit. Committed Advisors manages €7.7 billion, or $9.04 billion. Wendel expects to acquire the remaining capital interests in the firm in stages through 2035.

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Maria Armental ;  Ted Bunker;  Chris Cumming ; Luis Garcia ;  Laura Kreutzer;  Isaac Taylor;  Chitra Vemuri .