TGIF! To see you into the weekend, Maria Armental writes about Trivest Partners' acquisition of Applied Value Group, a management consultancy setting its sights on the growing universe of private equity-owned businesses.

Brian Gormley writes for WSJ Pro Venture Capital about how optimism around artificial intelligence is sparking a flood of investment into medical software and healthcare technology.

Now onto the news...

Trivest Partners acquired management consulting firm Applied Value Group, which is setting its expansion sights on the thousands of private equity-backed companies in need of expert advice. The company was founded as a management and investing firm by the late Swedish financier Jan Stenbeck and Bruce Grant, who remains executive chairman. The family office investments and social impact initiatives of Applied Value Group will remain a separate company, Applied Invest.

Growing acceptance of artificial intelligence in medicine is powering a revival of venture-capital investment in medical software and other healthcare technologies, Brian Gormley writes for WSJ Pro Venture Capital. U.S. and European healthtech startups raised $7.9 billion in venture capital in the first half, putting this year on pace to be the best funding year for the sector since 2022, when companies collected $16.3 billion for the full year, according to Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank.

American Industrial Partners is to acquire International Paper’s global cellulose fibers business for $1.5 billion, including $190 million of preferred stock, The Wall Street Journal reports. The New York-listed pulp and paper company began looking at potential suitors for its GCF business last fall as part of a strategy to focus on sustainable packaging solutions. International Paper expects pretax cash charges of about $158 million as well as pretax noncash accelerated depreciation charges of $570 million stemming from the exit.

Gryphon Investors has agreed to sell Shermco, an electrical testing, maintenance and repair business, to Blackstone. The transaction values the Irving, Texas, business at $1.6 billion. Midmarket buyout shop Gryphon bought Shermco from Oaktree Capital Management in 2018. Today, the company has more than 600 electrical testing technicians and 200 engineers across 40 sites in the U.S. and Canada.

H.I.G. Capital has acquired a majority stake in Avanta Salud Integral, an occupational health and safety service provider in Spain. The company’s founder Josep Pla and existing minority investor MCH Private Equity will reinvest alongside H.I.G. Valencia-based Avanta serves more than 100,000 clients covering more than 1 million employees through a network of 250 medical centers and mobile units.

ERA Partners has closed a $485 million continuation fund to extend its hold over American Aviation Holdings, a provider of helicopters for use in aerial firefighting and heavy lifting. The real-assets and infrastructure arm of StepStone Group led the deal. San Francisco-based infrastructure investment firm ERA has $1.3 billion in assets under management.

Springcoast Partners and Edison Partners have led a $105 million investment in supply-chain risk-management company Overhaul, Liz Young reports for the Journal’s Logistics Report. MidCap Financial provided debt financing for the deal.

Manufacturing-focused private-equity firm Core Industrial Partners has backed Edwards Moving & Rigging, a provider of heavy hauling and rigging services to sectors including power generation, manufacturing and construction.

KKR is leading a $230 million growth investment in Ontic, a software provider to the security industry. JMI Equity, Silverton Partners, Ridge Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures also participated in the Series C fundraising round. Austin, Texas-based Ontic produces software to help security teams monitor and respond to threats to business personnel and facilities.

Story3 Capital Partners, Nexus Capital Management and Aranda Principal Strategies have backed the recapitalization of Rent the Runway. The recapitalization is expected to improve the fashion rental company’s balance sheet by reducing its debt and interest expense and extending the maturity of its remaining debt. The company has struggled in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, hit by a trend toward more casual dress in the workplace and new competitors, the Journal reported.

Peak Rock Capital completed the acquisition of Aegis Industrial Software, a provider of software that helps run manufacturing processes in industries including aerospace and defense, medical devices and consumer electronics.

Valor Mining Credit Partners, a joint venture between energy trading firm Vitol and private-credit investor Breakwall Capital, has completed its first deal. The JV extended a $150 million senior secured, first-lien term loan to an unnamed U.S. metallurgical coal mining operation. Vitol and Breakwall formed the joint venture in July.

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

PGIM has raised $619 million for its second energy-focused private-credit fund. PGIM Energy Partners II can issue senior and junior debt, and makes structured equity investments, in midsize oil-and-gas companies in North America. The global asset-management arm of Prudential Financial manages around $10 billion in energy assets through investments in more than 120 companies.

Staple Investments has raised about $50 million so far for a fund targeting investments in lower midmarket companies led by Christian owners, according to John Guinee, who joined Staple earlier this year as managing partner and co-chief executive. The firm targets investments in companies with between $1 million and $15 million of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization that would prefer not to sell to traditional private-equity firms, according to its website. Before joining Staple, Guinee was co-founder and co-managing partner of Constitution Capital.

MetLife Investment Management has named Geert Henckens as global head of private fixed income. Henckens joined MetLife in 2014 and was most recently its global head of investment-grade credit. The investment arm of insurance company MetLife had $154.8 billion of private fixed income assets under management as of June 30 across private corporate and infrastructure debt, and asset-based financing.

Trading of shares in Clairvest Group was halted Thursday after new legislation in India threatened the operations of one of the private-equity firm's significant portfolio companies, Dow Jones Newswires’ Adriano Marchese reports. The Canadian private-equity management firm said India's parliament passed new online-gaming legislation that bans real-money gaming and associated facilitation of the same, which if signed into law would impact India-based Head Digital Works, in which Clairvest is invested.

The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System generated a net investment return of 2.2% in the first half of 2025, equivalent to a gain of $3.1 billion. Performance was affected by muted private valuations and transaction activity due to macroeconomic uncertainty, as well as the depreciation of the U.S. dollar. Infrastructure and public stocks were the main drivers of returns for OMERS, which had $140.7 billion in assets as of the end of June.

Blackstone’s credit and insurance arm has upsized an existing senior secured credit facility to Aligned Data Centers, bringing the lender’s commitment to the Texas business to over $1 billion. The cash will help fund the company’s plan to build more than five gigawatts of data-center capacity across the Americas.

StepStone Group’s private-wealth unit hit $10.2 billion in assets under management as of July 31, $5 billion of which it amassed in less than a year. The firm in February launched a European Long-Term Investment Fund to make private-debt investments. ELTIFs, as they are known, are designed to channel capital to investments that support economic growth and job creation in Europe.

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