Yesterday I offered some takeaways from the Harvard Business School private-equity conference. This morning, our own Preeti Singh shares some high-level themes from a student-run conference held on Friday at Columbia University. 

• “Quality” trumps “value”: Almost all panelists pointed to the quality of a target investment rather than deal value as the biggest driver for decision making in these times of high valuations. 
• Emerging manager growth risk: Investors say they’re willing to back emerging managers but will pay close attention to how quickly they grow their funds. Some attendees said they had walked away from an emerging manager that had grown assets too quickly, because they doubted the firm would continue to generate strong performance.
• LPs quick to look, slow to buy: Limited partners are intrigued by new investment strategies, such as impact funds and long-dated funds, but firms pitching them should prepare for a marathon rather than a sprint. U.S. investors in particular are taking their time before pledging money for some of these newer strategies.

Now, on to the news...

PCI Pharma Services, a pharmaceutical outsourcing company backed by Partners Group and Frazier Healthcare Partners, is exploring a sale, Laura Cooper and Will Louch report. The company has hired Jefferies LLC to shop the deal, which could value PCI at $2.5 billion according to people with knowledge of the deal.

Private-equity firms spent years gobbling up grocery store chains. But as WSJ Pro's Chris Cumming writes, a number of those deals have gone sour. Eight large private equity-backed grocery chains announced bankruptcies since 2015, compared with three that weren’t owned by private equity, according to data from S&P Market Intelligence and PitchBook Data.

Apollo Global Management-backed Cox Media Group has agreed to sell three Ohio newspapers back to Cox Enterprises Inc., allowing the papers to continue daily publication. The sale to the previous owner follows last year’s federal court decision reinstating a Federal Communications Commission rule that bars a single owner from operating both a daily newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market. An Apollo executive, David Sambur, said the firm would not accept reducing news coverage for the communities involved so it returned the papers to Cox.

KKR & Co. has agreed to sell German internet infrastructure company Deutsche Glasfaser to EQT Infrastructure in Stockholm and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, a public pension fund in Canada. KKR acquired the provider of residential internet access services to more than 600,000 German households in 2015. Deutsche Glasfaser will be combined with EQT portfolio company Inexio, and the firm will own 51% of the combined entity while Omers will own 49%.

A blank-check company sponsored by a Gores Group affiliate has closed its acquisition of Platinum Equity portfolio company Pacific Architects and Engineers LLC, which does business as PAE. Platinum acquired the company from Lindsay Goldberg in March 2016. The Falls Church, Va.-based business provides security and other support services for government construction sites around the world. The company, renamed PAE Inc., began trading on the Nasdaq stock market on Monday. Platinum retained a 23% stake in the company’s shares.

Platinum Equity-backed Veritv Holdings Co. began trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange after a transaction involving a blank-check company formed by David Cote, the former Honeywell International Inc. chairman and chief executive, and an affiliate of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. concluded last week. The Columbus, Ohio-based company makes infrastructure systems used in data centers and telecommunications hubs to keep electronics cool and secure. Platinum retained a 38% stake after the deal closed.

Warburg Pincus has invested in digital telecommunications company Circles.Life as the Singapore-based startup's expands to new markets in Asia, the companies said Tuesday. They described the funding as "substantial," but didn't offer further details. The funding, together with previous investment from Sequoia India, San Francisco-based Founders Found, and the investment arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board, leaves Circles.Life "well-capitalized to further accelerate its growth and expansion in new markets," the companies said. (Dow Jones Newswires) 

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

Permira has collected at least $956.7 million so far for a private credit fund, U.S. regulatory filings on Friday showed. The filings indicate the London-based firm’s Permira Credit Solutions IV Master Euro SCSp fund has rounded up that amount while a feeder fund has received $230 million of capital commitments, with no word on whether the two amounts overlap. A person familiar with the matter said Monday that Permira has already surpassed its target for the new credit pool and expects to have a final closing of the fund by the end of next month. WSJ Pro previously reported the fundraising target for the new pool is about €2.5 billion ($2.73 billion), or almost 50% more than the €1.7 billion raised for the firm’s third credit solutions fund.

H.I.G. Bayside Capital, H.I.G. Capital’s distressed debt and special situations affiliate, has promoted Andrew Scotland to co-head in Europe. He’ll work alongside Duncan Priston, a managing director and European co-head. Mr. Scotland joined H.I.G. Bayside in 2013 and previously worked for Royal Bank of Scotland.

EQT has promoted private-equity executives Erika Henriksson and Robert Maclean to partner. Ms. Henriksson is based in the firm’s hometown of Stockholm while Mr. Maclean works out of London.

NMC Health PLC confirmed in a regulatory filing on Monday market speculation that it had received “highly preliminary approaches” from KKR & Co. and GK Investment Holding Group about making an offer to buy the publicly traded company. NMC, whose shares trade in London, focuses on operating hospitals in the Middle East. The company said no offers have been made and there have been no discussions regarding potential terms of any bid. NMC also said it is examining the amount of its shares held by several investors, including its joint nonexecutive chairman, Dr. Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, to determine whether the amounts have been accurately reported to market regulators. The company’s shares, which have fallen about 59% since mid-December, jumped about 32% on Monday, closing at 926.20 pence.

The New York State Common Retirement Fund reported a nearly 5.3% return for the three months ended Dec. 31, bringing the public pension fund’s total assets to $225.9 billion, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said Monday. The fund’s assets are mostly invested in publicly traded securities but 9.4% is devoted to private equity.

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, the publicly traded infrastructure investment arm of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., is on track to recycle as much as $2 billion in investments by redeploying capital raised through asset sales into higher-yielding new investments, according to a statement from the company included in its fourth-quarter earnings report. The firm said just three transactions that recently closed—involving a power distribution businesses in Australia and Colombia and a toll road in Chile—produced $550 million in net proceeds for the firm. BIP also said it has agreed to sell its North American electricity transmission operation to net $60 million in proceeds, with an after-tax internal rate of return of about 23% and 3.5 times invested capital.

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