Good morning and welcome to the WSJ Pro Private Equity newsletter. Today we lead off with the latest large tech bet for a private-equity giant: CVC Capital Partners' investment in cybersecurity company Acronis. The London-based buyout shop put up the bulk of a $250 million investment in the Swiss company, at a healthy $2.5 billion valuation, as I report today for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The valuation reflects quick growth for the 18-year-old company, which was valued at just over $1 billion about two years ago, in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Also in today’s news, WSJ Pro’s Laura Kreutzer reports that Warren Equity Partners closed its third industrial products and services fund for at $673 million and The Wall Street Journal's Miriam Gottfried has news of leadership promotions on the private-equity team at Blackstone Group.

Now on to today's news...

CVC Capital Partners has led a $250 million investment in Acronis that values the cybersecurity company at $2.5 billion, Chris Cumming writes for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The firm makes cybersecurity and data-protection software, has annual revenue of several hundred million dollars and a recurring-revenue growth rate of more than 50%, said company founder Serguei Beloussov.

Warren Equity Partners has wrapped up its second fund focused on industrial businesses that help upgrade and maintain U.S. infrastructure and buildings, WSJ Pro Private Equity’s Laura Kreutzer reports. The new fund’s final tally is more than double the initial $310 million that the firm raised for its debut effort back in 2019.

Blackstone Group Inc. is elevating a number of longtime staffers to new leadership roles in its main private-equity business, in a sign of the growing heft of the unit in which the investment giant cut its teeth 36 years ago, Miriam Gottfried writes for The Wall Street Journal.

KKR & Co. has purchased Natural Pet Food Group, based in New Zealand, investing through its KKR Asian Fund IV, Stephen Wright reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The company caters to affluent pet owners and plans to expand in international markets.

Francisco Partners has acquired securities trading software company TradingScreen Inc. and is combining it with risk and compliance technology company Imagine Software Inc. to create a trading and portfolio management system under the TS Imagine name. The two New York-based companies combined will have about 400 employees. Francisco expects to close on its acquisition of Imagine this month. Both companies operate as cloud-based software-as-a-service businesses.

Brentwood Associates, a midmarket firm that backs consumer facing businesses, said it has acquired a controlling stake in filtered drinking water and ice provider Watermill Express, LLC alongside the company’s founders Lani and Don Dolifka, who will retain a minority stake.

Eldridge Industries, joined by strategic investor J.E. Dunn Construction Co., led a $190 million investment, including bond support, in digital design-build company Prescient Co. The Charlotte, N.C.-based business focuses on developing apartment buildings and hospitality structures. Eldridge has backed the company since 2018, including with a $90 million commitment last June.

Growth investor Insight Partners led a $73 million investment in SafetyCulture PTY Ltd., joining Tiger Global, Index Ventures and Blackbird in backing the Australian company at a valuation of about $1.6 billion. SafetyCulture’s mobile apps and website are used by more than 28,000 customers to inspect and monitor safety and quality.

Growth investor Baymark Partners in Plano, Texas, has acquired two fire safety companies, Swanson Fire Protection Inc. and Residential & Commercial Fire Protection Inc., according to investment advisory firm Generational Equity. Jacksonville, Fla.-based Swanson designs and installs sprinkler systems while Waldorf, Md.-based RCFP does similar work focused on commercial and residential construction as well as maintenance and repair.

KKR & Co. and aviation finance firm Altavair LP have closed on a sale and leaseback transaction with Singapore Airlines involving four Airbus A350-900 airliners. KKR funds provided the capital to finance the deal while Altavair is the servicer of the assets.

New York-based private-equity firm BRS & Co. said it has acquired control of Shearwater Research Inc, a Richmond, Va.-based company that designs and manufactures computers and electronics used in technical diving.

KKR & Co. said it has acquired a 178,400 square foot industrial property in Tampa, Fla., out of the global investment firm’s opportunistic real estate strategy, adding that the property was already leased to three tenants. The acquisition expands the firm’s real estate holdings in the greater Tampa area to 1.4 million square feet.

Crest Rock Partners is backing technology consulting company Jelecos LLC. The Omaha, Neb.-based company is a consulting partner and reseller of Amazon.com Inc. web services.

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Dyal Capital Partners, which invests in private-equity fund managers, said it has received needed consent agreements from investors in the funds it oversees to conclude a $12.5 billion combination with Owl Rock Capital Group through a blank-check company, Altimar Acquisition Corp. Owl Rock said in March that it had obtained the consent of shareholders in the four business development companies it oversees. The deal would form Blue Owl Capital, with $50.9 billion in assets under management and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ATAC ticker. A court challenge brought by private credit firm Sixth Street Partners, contending that the deal required its consent, was rejected last month by a Delaware Chancery Court. Dyal owns 10% of Sixth Street, which it obtained in 2017 for about $417 million, court papers show. Altimar is backed by HPS Investment Partners. A meeting of shareholders of the special purpose acquisition company to vote on the deal is set for May 18. 

A blank-check company backed by Patient Square Capital has agreed to acquire and bring public healthcare and biopharmaceutical technology company Roivant Sciences Ltd. in a deal that values the Swiss company at about $5 billion. The special purpose acquisition company, Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corp., brings about $411 million to the deal from cash it raised in an initial public offering last October. In addition, a private investment in public equities transaction that includes Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Palantir Technologies will add $200 million. 

Shares of Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., which went public through a 2019 bank-check deal, stumbled Monday after the space tourism company said it would restate certain past financial results after Securities and Exchange Commission guidance on accounting for warrants in deals involving special-purpose acquisition companies, Robb M. Stewart reports for Dow Jones Newswires. On Friday, the company said it would restate financial results for last year to account for warrants of Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp., the SPAC that acquired the company and brought it public, but said the restatement wouldn’t affect adjusted pre-tax earnings. Virgin Galactic shares fell 9% to close at $20.14 on Monday and have fallen 15% since the end of last year.

KKR & Co. has rounded up $18.5 billion for its latest North American buyout fund, Reuters News reported, citing people familiar with the offering. One investor that disclosed a commitment to the fund is the Minnesota State Board of Investment, which approved a $300 million commitment earlier this year, according to WSJ Pro Private Equity’s LP Commitments database. Around $1.5 billion of the fund’s capital came from KKR and its employees, Reuters reported.

New State Capital Partners has collected $450 million for its third fund, New State Capital Partners Fund III LP, bringing its total assets under management to about $1.2 billion. The firm invests in the business services, industrials, and consumer sectors, writing checks of as much as $100 million per transaction in companies with adjusted pre-tax earnings of $8 million to $35 million.

NGP Energy Capital Management has rounded up at least $308 million so far for NGP Royalty Partners LP, according to a regulatory filing. The amount raised so far puts the fund more than halfway to a $500 million goal indicated in the filing. NGP is one of a small vanguard of firms pitching funds focused on oil and gas and mineral rights, WSJ Pro Private Equity previously reported.

Hg Capital-backed used car seller MeinAuto Group AG expects to sell shares in an initial public offering for €16 to €20 (or about $19.23 to $24.04) each, which would give it a market capitalization of as much as €1.5 billion, Kim Richters reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The company expects to list on the Frankfurt stock exchange with trading to begin next week. Hg is expected to sell 11 million shares while retaining  "a significant investment," the company said.

Blackstone Group Inc.-backed Talaris Therapeutics Inc. plans to raise as much as $157.6 million through an initial public offering of shares priced at the midpoint of an expected range of $16 to $18 each, Colin Kellaher reports for Dow Jones Newswires. A regulatory filing shows that Blackstone owns a nearly 25% stake in the company, while four other investment firms combined hold another third of the company’s equity. Louisville, Ky.-based Talaris is developing a new method of stem-cell transplantation and said the IPO would provide working capital into 2025.

Spark Capital-backed payments software company Flywire Corp. has registered for an initial public offering of shares, without saying how many shares it plans to issue or at what price range. The Boston-based company is also backed by Ossa Investments, F-Prime Capital Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the filing shows. Bain Capital Ventures and Spark Capital hold the biggest stakes in the company, at 15.5% and 14.5%, respectively, and neither is expected to sell any shares in the IPO.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to appoint one of the Federal Reserve’s top big-bank supervisors to become the acting comptroller of the currency, overseeing the country’s largest financial firms, Kate Davidson and Andrew Ackerman report for the Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter. Ms. Yellen is expected to name Michael Hsu, associate director of the Fed’s bank supervision and regulation division, as first deputy comptroller, the person said.

Maverix Private Equity in Toronto has added Michael Wasserman as a managing partner, joining founder John Ruffolo and Mark Maybank from Miami-based H.I.G Capital. Maverix recently announced that it raised $500 million for its debut growth-equity fund and also recently added Peter Hass as associate partner. Mr. Ruffolo set up the firm after leaving the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, where he helped establish the pension investor’s venture fund.

Kohlberg & Co. must live up to its agreement to acquire cake decorating technology company DecoPac Holdings Inc. from Snow Phipps Group for $550 million, a Delaware court ruled on Friday. The Chancery Court decision gives the midmarket buyout firm several days to work out any remaining issues to be resolved. Kohlberg declined to comment on the ruling, according to a spokeswoman. Snow Phipps and the Anoka, Minn.-based company sued Kohlberg last year after the firm sought to cancel a deal reached in March 2020, saying that coronavirus pandemic-related lockdowns had made it impossible to obtain debt financing to close the deal, which valued the company at about 12.4 times adjusted pre-tax earnings on a pro forma basis. The company’s earnings came to about $49.8 million in 2019.

Ant Group Co.’s investment value has been slashed by Fidelity Investments after China's regulatory crackdown on the financial-technology giant severely dented its growth prospects, Serena Ng and Jing Yang write for The Wall Street Journal. The Boston-based investment firm recently marked the value of its Ant investments to imply a valuation of  $144 billion, down from $295 billion last August. The Hangzhou-based company has expanded rapidly in mobile payments through its Alipay unit, handling the equivalent of more than $17 trillion worth of transactions in the 12 months to June 2020.

Nordic Capital-backed online payments company Trustly Group AB has put an initial public offering on hold amid a Swedish Financial Services Authority review, Dominic Chopping reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The regulator began a supervisory review of the company's Swedish unit in October,  checking compliance with money laundering and terrorist-financing prevention rules. Trustly said it is engaging in a dialogue with the FSA. The company’s systems are used to transfer money between bank accounts. It had expected to raise about 8 billion Swedish kronor (or roughly $944.8 million).

Ares Management Corp. said the Los Angeles firm and its executives contributed more than $5.8 million to hospitals and organizations focused on mitigating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, in its first annual report on the sustainability of its business activities. In an introduction to the report, which outlines the firm’s environmental, social and governance impacts, co-founder and Chief Executive Michael Arougheti said 2020 marked an inflection point for the firm as it pivoted to focus on the issues through hiring, outreach and measurement of its internal operations and those of portfolio companies. 

Separate bids from KKR & Co. and EQT AB, joined by Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, have been rejected by Royal KPN NV, the Dutch telecommunications company, Kim Richters and Mauro Orru report for Dow Jones Newswires. The EQT-Stonepeak offer was expected to value the company at more than $15 billion, the Journal reported last month. The company said its board of management and supervisory board dismissed the offers after reviewing both, adding that there haven't been negotiations with the suitors.

Publicly traded GCM Grosvenor Inc. plans to restate its 2020 earnings to reflect a change in accounting for previously issued warrants that will add $10 million to $15 million to its operating expenses for the year, citing new guidance on handling the obligations from the Securities and Exchange Commission. GCM Grosvenor also said the change will have a similar impact on its 2021 first quarter operating income. The firm went public last year through a combination with a special purpose acquisition company that had issued warrants to its investors. 

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