Welcome back, readers! Private-equity interest in sports and entertainment companies has steadily increased in recent years, driving the formation of new funds focused on the sectors. One firm, Bluestone Equity Partners, is backing its first deal in the entertainment sector out of its debut fund, just a few months after announcing the fund’s first sports-related deal, Isaac Taylor reports. Also, Calpers CIO Nicole Musicco is leaving the massive pension manager at the end of this month and SVB Capital might soon have a new owner. Finally, new research challenges the notion that mergers and acquisitions are always bad for companies, the Journal reports.

Finally, tomorrow we will host a free webinar on asset-based lending and distressed credit, so be sure to sign up below!

Read on for more details…

Bluestone Equity Partners, a private-equity firm founded by ex-NBA executive Bobby Sharma, has backed its first investment in the entertainment sector, Isaac Taylor writes for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The New York firm is pledging nearly $20 million to RWS Global, which focuses on design, casting and programming for major entertainment destinations and venues.

Nicole Musicco, the chief investment officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest U.S. public pension, is stepping down at the end of this month, citing family issues drawing her back to Toronto. As The Wall Street Journal’s Heather Gillers reports, Musicco is the sixth official to leave the role in 20 years. The $463.08 billion California pension system hired her early last year from RedBird Capital Partners, a private-equity firm in New York which she joined in Canada after a stint with the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario. Calpers said her deputy, Dan Bienvenue, will replace her on an interim basis.

Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital and Atlas Merchant Capital are vying with San Francisco-based Vector Capital for SVB Capital, the venture capital investment unit of SVB Financial Group, Lauren Thomas writes for The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. A court decision on a winner is expected in the next few weeks. The business could fetch anywhere between $250 million and $500 million, the people said, cautioning that a transaction still isn’t guaranteed and would need to be reviewed by the creditors’ committee too. Bankers at Centerview Partners have been advising the parent company on the process.

The latest research shows no clear answer to whether mergers and acquisitions work for companies and their investors, Ben Dummett reports for The Wall Street Journal. While past studies have suggested that M&A is more often a losing bet than a winner, except for the bankers who engineer the nuts and bolts of dealmaking, more recent research suggests it’s a tossup. But companies that engage in M&A more frequently tend to do better at making their deals work.

Asset-based lending is a growing area of private finance, supported by a retrenchment by banks and economic conditions. At the same time, pockets of corporate weakness could create a favorable environment for distressed investing. Our webinar on Sept. 19 will delve into the opportunities in both areas, with perspectives from Evan Carruthers, chief investment officer and co-CEO of Castlelake; Cindy Chen Delano, partner at Invictus Global Management; Sara McGinty, managing director with Ares Management’s Ares Credit Group; and Randy Raisman, managing director at Marathon Asset Management. You can register here.

Buyout firm 777 Partners in Miami said it has added English soccer team Everton Football Club to its sports holdings, acquiring a 94% interest from Farhad Moshir. Everton is building a new stadium in Liverpool with a capacity to seat nearly 53,000 fans. The firm already owns soccer teams in countries such as Spain, France, Germany, Brazil and Australia.

Paine Schwartz Partners has lowered its bid for Australian vegetable and fruit grower Costra Group Holdings to 3.20 Australian dollars, or around $2.06, per share for the stock it doesn’t already own, Costra Group said in a statement. The revised bid values the company’s equity at A$1.49 billion, Dow Jones Newswires David Winning writes.

KKR has agreed to buy a 20% stake in the regional data center business of Singaporean telecommunications company Singtel for up to 1.1 billion Singapore dollars, or around $800 million. The investment values the regional data center business at S$5.5 billion and KKR has the option to increase its stake to 25% of the business by 2027 at the agreed valuation, Singtel said.

Leonard Green & Partners has joined fellow private-equity firm ​​Hellman & Friedman in backing insurance broker Hub International at a $23 billion valuation for the acquisitive company, more than double its $10 billion value when it added Altas Partners as a backer in 2018. Hellman & Friedman retains a controlling interest in Chicago-based Hub, which generated about $3.7 billion in revenue last year.

General Catalyst said it led a €209 million growth investment, equivalent to $222.8 million, in German defense technology company Helsing, joined by strategic investor Saab. The startup is focused on developing artificial intelligence-based software for military electronics.

Clearlake Capital Group, Charlesbank Capital Partners and Fortress Investment Group have recapitalized college sports media and marketing company Learfield, reducing the Plano, Texas, company’s debt by $600 million and investing $150 million in new equity. Learfield said its existing investors retained equity in the business. The company’s earlier backers include private-equity firms Atairos and Silver Lake, according to the firms’ websites.

Quad-C Management in Charlottesville, Va., said it is backing infrastructure services provider Vortex Cos. The Houston-based company makes maintenance materials at a factory in Utah and fabricates robotics and sewer-system monitoring technology at a plant in South Carolina.

Marcelo Claure’s recently formed Bicycle Capital in Miami said it is co-leading a $50 million growth commitment to motorcycle rental company Mottu with QED Investors and joined by Endeavor Catalyst and Caravela. The São Paulo-based company operates in more than 30 cities in Brazil and Mexico, renting power bikes to some 50,000 delivery workers. Set up in June, Bicycle focuses on Latin American investments.

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

Latin America-focused private-equity firm Southern Cross Group in Santiago is selling Petrobrás fuels retailer Esmax Distribusción in Chile to strategic buyer Saudi Aramco, which said it is making its first downstream retail investment in Latin America. Southern Cross initially backed the operator of filling stations in 2017, according to its website.

Everstone Capital in Singapore has sold more than half its stake in the company that operates Burger King restaurants in India, reducing its holdings in publicly traded Restaurant Brands Asia to about 15% from 41%, a regulatory filing with BSE India shows. Everstone owns the shares through QSR Asia and had been in talks to sell its stake to Advent International and General Atlantic but the discussions ended earlier this year, according to local news reports. Everstone didn’t identify the buyers in the filing.

Sequoia Capital-backed grocery delivery company Instacart raised its initial public offering price range to $28 to $30 a share from a prior target of $26 to $28, in a move that confirmed a Wall Street Journal report Thursday, Colin Kellaher writes for Dow Jones Newswires. The price increase values the business at as much as $10 billion. Sequoia holds about 19% of the equity in the San Francisco-based company, which is legally called Maplebear, while D1 Capital Partners holds about 14%, but neither firm plans to sell shares in the IPO, a regulatory filing shows.

ForgePoint Capital has rounded up at least $191 million so far for ForgePoint Cybersecurity Fund III LP, according to a regulatory filing. The firm is seeking $750 million for the fund, the filing indicates. ForgePoint, which mainly targets series A and B investments in cybersecurity companies, closed its previous fund with $450 million in 2020.

Black Entertainment Television co-founder Sheila Johnson is into her third act, running a luxury resort chain and investing in commercial property and major league sports franchises in the years since selling BET to Viacom in 2001, Emily Bobrow writes for The Wall Street Journal. Among other things, she founded a marquee film festival in Virginia and earlier taught music lessons, wrote music textbooks and founded a student orchestra.

Invictus Growth Partners, a four-year-old private-equity firm focused on technology companies, has hired a Zaid Abdul-Aleem to lead its investor-relations efforts. He will be a partner in the Partner and Capital Solutions group, which handles fundraising and investor relations, Invictus said. Abdul-Aleem has more than 25 years of fundraising experience, most recently at Moelis & Co., where he was a managing director and global head of investor coverage for the investment bank’s private funds advisory group.

A private-equity executive compensation specialist, Kate Vera, has joined law firm McDermott Will & Emery as a partner in New York. She was previously with Kirkland & Ellis.

Goldman Sachs Group is preparing to offer wealthy clients more access to a unique investment: the chance to own a piece of a private sports team, AnnaMaria Andriotis reports for The Wall Street Journal. The bank is creating a sports franchise unit that will combine sports M&A and financing. A top goal is to work with asset and wealth management groups to pitch wealthy clients on investing in teams, stadiums and other flashy deals.

Big banks and brokerage firms are handing over bigger checks to settle regulatory investigations, including those that don’t result in losses for investors. U.S. market regulators are increasingly demanding tens of millions of dollars to settle technical violations that just a few years ago cost companies much less to resolve, the Journal’s Dave Michaels reports.

When Instacart lists in the coming week, it will leave many of its later growth investors with significant paper losses—a sign of the pain fund managers are facing after years of fast-and-loose spending, Berber Jin reports for The Wall Street Journal. The grocery-delivery firm is targeting a valuation of as much as $10 billion—sharply lower than the $39 billion valuation it reached at the peak of the startup investing frenzy two years ago. Many of the investors who poured almost $1 billion into Instacart’s last three investment rounds will be underwater on their shares at the anticipated price range of $28 to $30 a share, giving the company a market value of $9.3 billion to $9.9 billion.

Chimera Investment in Abu Dhabi has set up a $50 billion private-markets investment operation called Lunate, according to research organization Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute and several reports in the Middle East. Reuters said the firm’s owners include Chimera and Lunate managers Khalifa Al Suwaidi, Murtaza Hussain and Seif Fikry, all managing partners. The news agency said Lunate aims to invest in private equity, venture capital, infrastructure and private credit, among other strategies.

The Rockefeller Foundation said it will invest more than $1 billion to advance efforts to reduce air pollution and mitigate climate change over the coming five years, with a focus on things such as utility-scale battery technology and electrification in less developed rural areas in Africa.

Private credit stands to gain from the regional banking crisis earlier this year as banks have stepped back from some lending, according to Nicholas Goodman, president and finance chief of Brookfield in Toronto. As bankers start to return, there is an opportunity for partnerships to be set up, Goodman said at a finance conference in New York, Walden Siew reports for CFO Journal.

Asset manager DL Holdings Group in Hong Kong said it has acquired the 55% of DL Family Office that it didn’t already own for the equivalent of about $28.1 million, in cash and notes. Publicly listed DL Holdings, which has sponsored 18 funds that mainly invest in private equity, said in July that DL Family had assets of about $2.3 billion.

Hamilton Lane executives are leading one effort to open private equity to the masses, Andy Serwer reports for Barron’s. The Conshohocken, Pa.-based firm offers two vehicles for high-net-worth retail investors, including its $975 million Private Assets fund. Many other firms are vying to do the same, however, targeting a prize that Hamilton Lane figures could be worth $10 trillion in assets held by individuals.

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