Good morning! After a snowy weekend, we heated up our newsletter with two stories by my WSJ Pro colleagues.

First, insurer Liberty Mutual’s asset-management unit moved to expand its investments in transportation and industrial business by buying a stake in private-equity firm Mascarene Partners, a specialist in those sectors, Chris Cumming writes.

Also, Southfield Capital is acquiring artificial-intelligence company Contextual Software, betting the business’s systems can bolster both its portfolio companies and the private-equity firm itself, Maria Armental reports.

Now onto the news..

Insurer Liberty Mutual’s asset-management arm has acquired an equity stake in Mascarene Partners, a recently established firm specializing in transportation and industrial businesses, WSJ Pro's Chris Cumming writes. Liberty Mutual Investments, the Boston-based insurer’s $117 billion investment arm, took a strategic minority position in Mascarene and will provide the New York firm with money to pursue investments, LMI and Mascarene said Monday. LMI was looking for a way to invest in the transportation sector, while Mascarene's founders have investment experience in the industry.

Lower-midmarket firm Southfield Capital is making a double-barreled bet on the power of artificial intelligence, acquiring Contextual Software to work with the businesses Southfield backs and to turbocharge the Greenwich, Conn., firm for the age of AI, Maria Armental writes for WSJ Pro. A person familiar with the deal said the firm is investing $20 million to $50 million, which falls within a $20 million to $80 million typical investment range indicated on Southfield’s website.

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Silver Lake joined Abu Dhabi-based MGX and technology company Oracle as managing investors in a new U.S. entity set up to hold TikTok assets, with each owning 15% stakes, Amrith Ramkumar reports for the Journal. TikTok parent ByteDance in China retained a nearly 20% stake in TikTok USDS Joint Venture, which is led by TikTok CEO Shou Chew's deputy, Adam Presser. Existing TikTok investors hold about 30% of TikTok USDS's equity. Other notable investors include U.S. Vice President JD Vance's former firm Revolution, affiliates of General Atlantic, Dragoneer and Susquehanna International, as well as tech executive Michael Dell's family office. TikTok has 200 million U.S. users.

Private-equity firms Nexus Capital and Veritas Capital as well as Singapore-based investor Hillhouse are among the parties interested in a potential acquisition of the Graduate Record Examinations and the Test of English as a Foreign Language from nonprofit organization Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. ETS has been seeking bids of around $500 million for the graduate school and college entrance tests, some of the people said, and might sell a stake in itself as an alternative. Elysium Management, the family office of Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, has disengaged from talks with ETS, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Asset manager T. Rowe Price Associates and the Canada Growth Fund are backing a $75 million investment in Cyclic Materials, a technology company that supports the extraction of rare-earth elements through the recycling of electronic waste, the Journal reports. The Toronto company is developing a resilient supply chain through recycling to obtain rare earth elements.

Recently formed Inspirit Equity in Beverly Hills, Calif., is acquiring a majority stake in facilities management services provider Sizemore. The Augusta, Ga.-based company supplies janitorial, security and staffing services to clients. Inspirit was set up and is led by Charles Gores, a son of Platinum Equity founder Tom Gores.

WestBridge Capital is backing payments technology company Juspay with a $50 million growth investment that values the business at $1.2 billion. The deal included both primary and secondary investments. Bangalore, India-based Juspay handles payment flows for companies including Amazon.com and Flipkart, among many others.

Ardian in Paris and residential property specialist Rockfield Real Estate have expanded their strategy for providing student living accommodations with transactions in Italy, France and Spain. The deals add a 327-bed project in the Bordeaux region of France, a 750-bed residence in Barcelona and a 427-bed development in Milan.

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

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based firm Argonaut Private Equity has sold VoidForm Products to strategic buyer White Cap Supply Holdings. Argonaut and other investors backed VoidForm, which manufactures products designed to protect concrete structures, back in 2021.

Permira- and Warburg Pincus-backed wealth adviser Evelyn Partners has attracted buyout interest from lenders such as Barclays, NatWest and Royal Bank of Canada, Justin Cash reports for sister publication Financial News in London. Barclays offered £2.4 billion, or $3.24 billion, and NatWest bid £2.2 billion while Lloyds Banking Group has dropped out, according to a person close to the situation. Evelyn oversees £67 billion. The person said that some of the firms involved in the bidding for Evelyn were also mulling bids for Canaccord's U.K. wealth arm if they weren't able to secure a deal for the larger business.

Chicago-based private equity firm Monroe Street Partners has completed its sale of American Roadway Logistics, a Norton, Ohio-based provider of pavement marking and traffic safety-related services. Monroe Street acquired a majority stake in the company in 2024.

Shoreline Equity Partners has sold a residential specialty maintenance services provider Pool Troopers to strategic buyer SPS PoolCare, backed by Storr Group, with Balance Point Capital providing financing. Shoreline re-invested in the acquirer, obtaining a minority interest in the Austin, Texas-based company.

American Industrial Partners, a focused industrials investor, announced that an affiliate of AIP has completed its acquisition of the Global Cellulose Fibers business of International Paper.

Buyout firm EQT AB in Stockholm is offering to acquire information-technology services provider Mamezo at a price of ¥3,551 per share for the Tokyo-listed business, equivalent to $22.41, in a deal that values the company at $371 million. The deal would represent EQT's first IT services entry investment in Japan, once it closes. But Mamezo's shares rose significantly higher than EQT's offer price earlier last week, ending at ¥4,020 each Friday, after jumping from a ¥3,520 Tuesday close following a news report Wednesday that said EQT would soon make an offer, according to a regulatory filing in Tokyo. Mamezo said Wednesday that it was considering various options, including going private, in the filing. On Friday, the company said that while supportive of the bid, its directors would take a neutral stance on EQT's offer with respect to advising shareholders what to do.

Inverness Graham, a lower midmarket firm based in Wayne, Penn., has raised at least $177.4 million so far for Inverness Graham Investments V, according to a regulatory filing. Inverness closed the fund’s predecessor with $415 million in 2019. Inverness Graham was founded by senior executives at the family owned industrial firm The Graham Group.

Exit deals by EQT AB soared to a firm record €19 billion, or $22.48 billion, as well as €14 billion in co-investor realizations last year. Fundraising by the firm also took off last year, more than doubling the 2024 total collected to reach €26 billion, bringing the Stockholm firm's total assets to about €270 billion. EQT said BPEA Private Equity Fund IX is on track to reach its $14.5 billion hard cap before the end of March and that it has set an upper limit for EQT XI at €24 billion, with a first close likely by mid-year. EQT also brought in €1.9 billion for evergreen and institutional open-ended strategies, bringing their collective net asset value to €3.5 billion.

British Columbia Investment Management has appointed Jon Salon to replace departing Jim Pittman as global head of private equity, effective Feb. 2. Salon joined the public sector and pension fund investor in 2024 and has led its healthcare, venture and growth investing. The executive vice president also led BCI's New York office, where he is based. Pittman is leaving BCI at the end of this month after taking over private-equity and increasing it to over 36 billion Canadian dollars in value, equivalent to $26.11 billion from C$7 billion when he joined in 2016. Overall, BCI manages about C$295 billion.

Venture-capital investment in the U.S. surged more than 63% last year from 2024, rising to its highest level since 2021, WSJ Pro's Jon Leckie reports, citing market data provider PitchBook. The deluge of capital largely flowed to Northern California as venture capitalists chased jumbo deals in artificial-intelligence startups. The result was a concentration of capital in the Bay Area.

BlackRock TCP Capital Corp., a midmarket loan focused business development company of BlackRock, estimates that it will cut its net asset value per share to between $7.05 to $7.09 each for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2025, down around 19% from $8.71 each in the previous quarter, regulatory filings show. The portfolio NAV was negatively impacted by holdings that include Edmentum, SellerX, HomeRenew/Renovo and InMobi, among others. BlackRock agreed to waive one third of the BDC’s base management fee for the quarter, according to the filings

The California Public Employees' Retirement System had about $98.3 billion invested across private equity strategies at the end of June, returning 14.3% in the previous 12 months, by far the best one-year returns among the 30 U.S. pensions with the largest commitments to the asset class, according to a presentation to the Calpers Board of Administration last week by Anton Orlich, the system's managing investment director. Calpers also outperformed the group over the trailing three years with a 7.4% return. Orlich credited a turn to greater co-investing with helping to improve returns for the system, which holds about $605.27 billion for its beneficiaries.

CapVest Partners in London has registered in Milan in order to raise money in Italy for its sixth flagship fund, Lars Mucklejohn reports for sister publication Financial News in London, citing to a person familiar with the matter. CapVest manages roughly €12 billion, or about $14.1 billion.

BlackRock projected a 19% drop in the estimated net asset value of its BlackRock TCP Capital private-credit fund at the end of last year's fourth quarter, including a management fee waiver that amounted to 2 cents a share for the period, a securities filing shows. The New York asset manager said the NAV per share was expected to fall to a range of $7.05 to $7.09, down from $8.71 at the end of September. The firm cited issuer-specific developments and noted a rise in non-accrual debt to 4% of TCPC's holdings from 3.5% three months earlier. TCPC has a market capitalization of nearly $500 million.

Send us your tips, suggestions and feedback. Write to:

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