Welcome back.

First off in this morning's newsletter, Isaac Taylor reports that Ares Management led a $1.6 billion debt financing to support the merger of Yellow Wood Partners’ personal-care brands Suave Brands and Elida Beauty.

Next, our Wall Street Journal colleagues Lauren Thomas and Ben Dummett have news that Stonepeak has struck a deal with French shipping company CMA CGM to create a U.S.-based port venture valued at about $10 billion. The deal seeks to accelerate investments in new terminals and comes as the U.S. is seeking to revive its shipping industry to counter the rise of China.

We have these and more. Read on…

Ares Management has led a $1.6 billion debt financing package to support the merger of personal-care brands Suave Brands and Elida Beauty, both backed by consumer-focused firm Yellow Wood Partners, Isaac Taylor reports for WSJ Pro. Yellow Wood is merging the companies to form a new entity called Evermark. 

Investment firm Stonepeak has struck a deal with the French shipping company CMA CGM to create a U.S.-based port venture valued at around $10 billion, Lauren Thomas and Ben Dummett write for the Journal. The duo aims to accelerate investments in new terminals, which could potentially help weaken China’s grip on the shipping industry, a policy goal of the Trump administration. The deal involves 10 ports, including the Port Liberty terminal in New York City’s Staten Island and the Los Angeles Fenix Marine Services terminal, as well as sites in Brazil, in Spain and across Asia.

CVC has agreed to acquire U.S.-based professional equestrian sports league Equine Network from Growth Catalyst Partners in a roughly $300 million transaction, a person familiar with the deal told WSJ Pro's Maria Armental. The acquisition is the first new league investment in CVC’s Global Sports Group, formed last year as a global platform of sports leagues held across various CVC funds. Equine Network’s business consists of around 40 owned and operated competitions and more than 800 sanctioned third-party events.

AEA Investors’ growth buyout strategy AEA Elevate is acquiring digital marketing firm 829 Studios from fellow private investor CIVC Partners. Boston-based 829’s management team is reinvesting in the company alongside AEA Elevate. CIVC initially backed the company in 2021.

J.F. Lehman & Co. has acquired majority stakes in Reclamation Technologies USA and Tradewater LLC & Affiliates to form a new environmental services company focused on managing industrial and refrigerant gases and mitigating uncontrolled sources of methane.

Riverside Co.’s Riverside Acceleration Capital has led a $16.5 million growth investment in heyData, a provider of IT security and compliance technologies. The growth investment follows a lending deal that Riverside Acceleration Capital inked with the Berlin-based company last year.

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

Tree Line Capital Partners closed its fourth flagship fund focused on lending to U.S. lower midmarket companies with $1.1 billion in total capital commitments. Tree Line Direct Lending IV exceeded its $550 million equity target, with $724 million in equity commitments in addition to $355 million in leverage commitments, the firm said.

Voyager Ventures has raised a $275 million new fund, WSJ Pro Venture Capital’s Yuliya Chernova writes. Voyager Partners Fund II, which closed in December, brings Voyager’s assets under management to $475 million. The firm was started in 2021 by co-founders and general partners Sierra Peterson and Sarah Sclarsic. 

New 2nd Capital has served as a lead investor in a single-asset continuation fund that allows lower midmarket firm Boyne Capital to extend its hold on portfolio company Pilot Energy. Boyne initially backed the U.S.-based technology-enabled energy advisory and management company in 2020.

Midmarket firm Aurora Capital Partners has added Neel Bhatia and John Pencak to its executive board to bolster the firm’s strategy and operations program. Bhatia was previously an operating partner and senior adviser at Arcline Investment Management, while Pencak was a managing director at Riveron.

Megadeals may have dominated dealmaking in 2025, thanks partly to a spike in the second half of the year as deal gears re-engaged, but financial advisory firm Deloitte points to dealmakers’ ample, and largely untapped opportunity, in the middle market. In a report published today, Deloitte said 2026 has the potential for significant deal opportunities, urging dealmakers to direct their attention to smaller deals in the so-called mid- and lower midmarket. “These markets have been flat for a few years, which indicates possible untapped potential and pent-up demand in this space,” Deloitte said, pointing to a number of so-called tailwinds expected to fuel the flow of smaller transactions, including corporate sellers seeking to divest non-core businesses.

Financial advisers expect to dive deeper into private markets on behalf of their clients this year, especially in venture- and growth-capital strategies, Abby Schultz writes for sister publication Barron’s. A survey conducted for Hamilton Lane, an investment firm specializing in private markets, found that 97% of 390 advisers contacted globally allocate between 1% and 20% of their business to private markets. Eighty-six percent of these advisers expect to allocate more to private markets this year, although the results didn’t capture how much more. For this year, investors are expected to increase their exposure primarily to venture capital and growth, infrastructure, and private equity, the survey found.

U.K.-based firm Cinven hopes to move beyond the departures of two senior executives before rolling out marketing efforts for its next flagship fund, Sebastian McCarthy writes for sister publication Private Equity News. Cinven had been mulling when to launch the vehicle, with a rough aim to head into the market at the end of 2026 or early in 2027.

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