Good morning, and welcome to the WSJ Pro Private Equity newsletter.

Difficult as it is, fundraisng for first-time funds is not completely dead, and Renown Capital Partners—a recent Moore Capital Management spinout—is already halfway to its goal for its first fund, reports Luis Garcia.

Next, Ares Management says current tariff-related distress is not likely to be as bad as other recent financial upheavals, Rod James reports.

Finally, Brookfield Asset Management is briskly raising money to buy troubled commercial real estate, a possible signal this market may be reaching its bottom, Peter Grant reports for the Journal.

Now onto the news ...

Renown Capital Partners, which spun out of hedge-fund manager Moore Capital Management last month, is seeking $500 million to invest in businesses helping utilities and other companies shift to clean energy, Luis Garcia reports for WSJ Pro. The newly formed firm has already secured half that total from its two main backers, Moore and the Daily Mail and General Trust, owner of the Daily Mail and other British newspapers.

President Trump’s tariff moves are unlikely to trigger a sharp uptick in private-equity-owned companies' failing to repay their loans, Ares Management leadership said on their latest call with analysts, Rod James reports for WSJ Pro. Chief Executive Michael Arougheti said that indicators of distress seen at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and during the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 have yet to materialize, while the average loan-to-value of the firm's loans is lower.

Brookfield Asset Management raised nearly $6 billion for its new real estate fund in the first quarter, reports Peter Grant for the Journal. The firm’s haul suggests that the beleaguered commercial real estate market may be hitting a bottom, as fund managers like Brookfield aim to take advantage of the sharp drop in property prices in recent years.

Investment firm 3G Capital Partners is taking footwear brand Skechers private through a $9.42 billion deal, paying $63 a share in cash, Katherine Hamilton reports for the Journal. Skechers shares climbed 25% to $61.68 in early trading Monday. 3G expects to hold about 80% of Skechers units once the deal closes.

Madison Dearborn Partners in Chicago is acquiring a stake in technology and data company NextGen Healthcare from backer Thoma Bravo, which is also retaining an ownership position in the business. The company’s software is used in records management and running healthcare practices. Thoma Bravo first backed NextGen in 2023.

General Atlantic is nearing a deal to take a minority stake in Liftoff, a mobile app platform backed by Blackstone, at a valuation of more than $4 billion, Bloomberg News reports, citing people familiar with the effort. 

Blackstone agreed to pay $295 million to acquire royalties from the publicly traded Elanco Animal Health for the human-health applications of the drug lotilaner. Blackstone is investing through its life-sciences and credit and insurance businesses.

Software investor Thoma Bravo is backing accounting program developer HubSync with a growth investment of more than $100 million.

Leonard Green & Partners led the formation of a continuation vehicle to recapitalize Fullscript, a healthcare technology platform backed by midmarket firm HGGC and minority investor Snapdragon Capital Partners. HGGC and Snapdragon initially made a $240 million growth investment for Fullscript back in 2021.

Lower midmarket firm NexPhase Capital bought autism-treatment company Behavior Frontiers, which had been backed by healthcare firm Lorient Capital.

The growth investment arm of Bessemer Venture Partners, BVP Forge, is backing logistics workflow software and systems developer Vector Labs. The company’s applications are used to manage shipping operations, including yard activity, gatekeeping and paperwork.

Eiffel Investment Group in Paris is providing senior bond financing totaling €20 million, or about $23 million, to renewable energy developer ReVenton in Germany.

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

Great Hill Partners recapitalized Vision Government Solutions, which makes software for taxes, appraisal and other purposes, with Weatherford Capital, a family-owned investment firm, also participating in the deal. Rubicon Technology Partners, which invested in Vision in 2021, exited its investment.

Vitruvian Partners acquired travel tour operator Great Rail Journeys from Duke Street Capital in a transaction valued at over £200 million, or $265 million, the Times of London reported. Duke Street acquired the business in 2018.

AI Fund, a venture firm founded and led by artificial intelligence researcher Andrew Ng, has raised a sophomore fund to build AI startups in-house, WSJ Pro Venture Capital’s Marc Vartabedian writes. The $190 million fund reflects continued investor appetite for new AI startups even as venture capital coalesces around the sector’s largest players. 

Ares Management has raised more than $1.14 billion for Ares Infrastructure Debt Fund VI and related vehicles, a regulatory filing shows. The fund helped drive the firm’s capital-raising activities over the just-ended quarter, according to Chief Executive Michael Arougheti. Speaking with analysts during an earnings call Monday, Arougheti also said the firm’s third infrastructure-secondaries fund has surpassed $2 billion with a final closing expected during the summer months.

Digital-services investment firm Recognize Partners in New York collected more than $1.22 billion for Recognize Partners II  and a related pool, after receiving an initial commitment last month, a regulatory filing shows. The firm, co-founded by former Clayton Dubilier & Rice partner David Wasserman, closed its debut fund with about $1.3 billion around the start of 2022. Rede Partners is assisting with the new fundraise.

Blackstone's private wealth group hired Jennifer Abate as senior managing director and head of the registered investment advisor channel at the firm, the firm said in an emailed news release. Abate will be based in New York and previously spent more than 30 years at Lazard Asset Management.

Partners Capital Investment Group appointed Andy Canovali as managing director and head of secondaries and Sarah Condon as a senior associate, both joining from Performance Equity Management.

Warburg Pincus-backed discount retailer Gabe’s is in discussions to hand control to a group of lenders as it faces a potential pullback in consumer spending, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reports. The Morgantown, W.Va.-based company, which has been owned by Warburg Pincus since 2016, operates more than 160 stores in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions under the names Gabe’s and Old Time Pottery, selling apparel and home goods, according to its website. Warburg Pincus declined to comment.

Uncertainty due to the trade war has chilled business investment and hiring, said Marc Rowan, Apollo Global Management's chief executive, during an interview broadcast by CNBC, the Journal’s Tali Arbel reports. "We have ground things to a halt" in the economy, Rowan said, and the firm sees a possibility of two straight quarters of economic contraction—the classic definition of a recession. Rowan said the Trump administration’s handling of tariffs has "also in the long term just damaged the brand" of the U.S., which is "experiencing a loss of hyper-exceptionalism" as a place to invest.

Lexington Partners, part of fund manager Franklin Templeton, is partnering with Singapore-based investment portal ADDX to enable participation in secondary investment vehicles by accredited investors. Franklin is also making Lexington’s secondaries investments available to accredited investors in Canada through the Franklin Lexington PE Secondaries Fund.

A reeling stock market is causing problems for cybersecurity providers looking to go public, WSJ Pro’s James Rundle reports. While a predicted explosion in cybersecurity initial public offerings never materialized, enough companies are doing well enough that they face the choice of listing or being acquired. Growth investment hasn’t returned to the highs of the early decade, but triple-digit millions aren’t unheard of, and the resulting big valuations are forcing IPO conversations.

Power Corp. of Canada formed a sustainable-investment arm to back midmarket companies, and has so far collected more than $330 million in commitments for the strategy. Power Sustainable Decarbonization Private Equity has raised capital from investors including Canada Life and Fonds de solidarité FTQ. 

GI Partners formed an insurance distribution holding company, led by industry executives Brad Emmons and Brian Hanuschak, to buy other managing general agencies with technology-driven operations.

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

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