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Private credit may be under a cloud, but some firms are still raising huge pools of capital. Barings managed to collect a $19 billion haul for its direct-lending business, Isaac Taylor reports for WSJ Pro.

And the SpaceX initial public offering could yield a more than $10 billion payday for Darsana Capital Partners, Peter Rudegeair reports for the Journal.

Now onto the news...

Barings raised $19 billion for its direct-lending business, despite negative headlines plaguing the private-credit market, Isaac Taylor reports for Pro. The sum includes anticipated leverage of 35%, in addition to equity commitments from third-party investors. Charlotte, N.C.-based Barings is majority owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., which contributed a small portion of the money raised, said Tyler Gately, head of North America private credit at Barings. 

SpaceX’s planned initial public offering could produce paper gains of over $10 billion for publicity-shy hedge-fund Darsana Capital Partners, if the IPO values the company at around $1.5 trillion as expected, Peter Rudegeair reports for the Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. Darsana has backed the business since 2019, when it was valued at about $30 billion. SpaceX accounts for nearly 60% of New York-based Darsana’s assets, while founder Anand Desai has also invested in retailer Dick's Sporting Goods and Wingstop.

Eliott Investment Management has built a sizable stake in Bio-Rad Laboratories and plans to push the supplier of life-science tools and diagnostics products to boost its underperforming stock price, the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Elliott is also a large investor in Sartorius, the German supplier of pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment that Bio-Rad has a strategic investment in, the people said.

Princeville Capital led an $80 million growth investment in agentic analytics developer Sigma, joined by other new investors and existing backers such as Avenir Growth Capital and Altimeter Capital. The deal valued the company at $3 billion.

Salt Creek Capital has acquired MML Diagnostics Packaging, a Troutdale, Ore.-based contract manufacturing and packaging company for medical outsourced equipment manufacturers, according to an emailed announcement.

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

Sverica Capital Management in Boston is selling Microsoft services partner WinWire Holdings to strategic buyer NTT Data. Sverica has backed the Santa Clara, Calif., company for about five years.

Bain Capital has closed its sixth Asia-focused buyout fund, reaching $10.5 billion, as expected. The Boston firm collected about $9.1 billion from outside investors and employees, partners and related entities contributed the remainder, Kimberley Kao reports for Dow Jones Newswires. Outside investors in Bain Capital Asia Fund VI included the California State Teachers' Retirement System, which committed $225 million, according to the WSJ Pro Private Equity LP Commitments database.

European buyout firm EQT AB will manage the European Union's Scaleup Europe Fund, a technology investment vehicle with a €5 billion, or roughly $5.83 billion, target size, according to the Stockholm-based firm. Contributors to the fund include EQT and Novo Holdings as well as regional banks, insurers and government-backed entities.

StepStone Group in New York has added Taylor Benson as head of U.S. defined contribution to focus on the growing interest in private markets among retirement savings plan sponsors and individual investors. She joins from BlackRock.

MiddleGround Capital in Lexington, Ky., has promoted Roland Veldhuijzen van Zanten to managing director, based in Amsterdam. The move was part of a series of promotions that included naming Joost Gottgens and Tyler May as directors.

BlackRock unit HPS Investment Partners has agreed to a €15 billion, or around $17.5 billion, private capital collaboration with Citigroup to provide private financing to corporate and financial sponsor-owned borrowers in Europe with eventual plans to expand to the Middle East.

Fund houses should continue expecting lower allocations from wealthy individuals to private credit, according to the head of wealth at one of the U.S.'s biggest asset managers, Xhulio Ismalaj reports for sister publication Financial News in London. Many wealth managers are pausing investments in the sector as "there are some real legitimate questions to be asked and answered" following the recent run on the asset class, Nuveen's global head of wealth and retirement advisory services Jeff Carlin said.

Brookfield Asset Management-backed Pinegrove Credit Partners and the credit arm of Sun Hung Kai & Co. in Hong Kong have formed a joint venture to provide credit to growth-stage startups in Asia, similar to a strategy established with Singapore's Temasek.

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