Welcome back! Yesterday Donald Trump was sworn in as president and the new president is wasting no time issuing executive orders, including those targeting immigration and energy. Kicking off this morning’s newsletter, Isaac Taylor has the scoop on a new credit fund from tech-focused firm Thoma Bravo, which has closed its third private credit fund with more than $3 billion, including leverage. Meanwhile, Chris Cumming delves into Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe’s settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations of antitrust violations involving portfolio company U.S. Anesthesia Partners.

Finally, private-equity backed oilfield services company Flowco Holdings pulled off a strong initial public offering last week, but as WSJ Pro’s Luis Garcia writes, dealmakers shouldn’t necessarily assume that public stock investors are rolling out the red carpet for more oilfield service company IPOs.

Dive in for more details on these stories and many more…

Thoma Bravo has amassed $3.6 billion in lending capacity for its third fund dedicated to private credit, including anticipated leverage, and plans to announce the fund’s closing Tuesday, WSJ Pro’s Isaac Taylor reports. The private-equity firm began the process for raising the new pool, Thoma Bravo Credit Fund III, as well as leverage commitments, roughly two years ago and started investing from the vehicle about a year ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. A securities filing in December 2022 indicated the firm sought $1.75 billion from investors in the vehicle. The software-focused firm wrapped up its second credit fund in 2022 after amassing $3.3 billion in investment capacity, including leverage.

Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it tried to consolidate the Texas anesthesia market to drive up prices, eight months after a federal judge dismissed similar charges against the private-equity firm, Chris Cumming writes for WSJ Pro. Under the settlement, announced Friday, Welsh Carson agreed to limit its involvement with Texas anesthesia-services company U.S. Anesthesia Partners, to obtain the regulator’s advance approval for any future acquisitions of anesthesia businesses and to provide advance notice of future deals for hospital-based physician practices.

Flowco Holdings’ successful $427.2 million initial public offering might not necessarily augur a resurgence in oil-field services IPOs, according to energy bankers. Houston-based Flowco,which is backed by Energy Capital Partners and White Deer, saw its share price jump about 24% in its trading debut Thursday at the New York Stock Exchange. The first-day pop sent the company’s valuation to some $2.6 billion and marked the largest IPO of an energy company by money raised in nearly six years, according to research provider Renaissance Capital. But energy bankers say the success is likely tied more to the unique combination of services Flowco offers than to a recovery in stock investor appetite for the sector. Read more in Garcia’s Take. 

H.I.G. Capital is buying the media measurement and analytics unit of market research firm Kantar Group for about $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the transaction. Private equity already owns a large stake in Kantar Group. In 2019, ad holding company WPP agreed to sell a 60% stake in Kantar to Bain Capital Private Equity, raising about $3.1 billion, and kept the remaining 40% stake.

Conning & Co., a subsidiary of Generali Investments, has agreed to acquire a 77% stake in private credit firm MGG Investment Group for $320 million plus the potential for additional earnouts if the company hits certain milestones. MGG management and existing shareholder McCourt Global will retain minority stakes in the private-credit firm.

The Qatar Investment Authority led a $100 million growth investment in data management software company Instabase, joined by several existing investors including Greylock Partners. The San Francisco company uses artificial intelligence technology in its programs.

Infrastructure investor Generate Capital is providing a $200 million secured loan to industrial company Pacific Steel Group to support the construction of an emissions-reducing electric arc furnace micro-mill in California. The new plant will convert locally sourced scrap metal into custom-length steel reinforcement bars used to strengthen concrete. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System and Australian industry superannuation retirement fund Hesta are among a group of co-investors that also backed the deal alongside Generate.

Temasek Holding’s decarbonisation-focused GenZero in Singapore led a $32 million growth investment in carbon ratings provider BeZero Carbon, joined by strategic and existing backers. The company creates ratings which it says influence the prices of carbon credits.

Steve Cohen’s Point72 Private Investments led a $90 million growth investment in driving software services company Netradyne, joined by Pavilion Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. The San Diego-based company develops systems to analyze driving behavior used by fleet operators to identify “good” drivers and reduce insurance and other costs.

Convergent Energy and Power, an energy storage company backed by Energy Capital Partners, has closed a $584.5 million loan facility from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a solar photovoltaic system and various battery storage systems across Puerto Rico to help improve the territory’s energy resilience and energy affordability. Energy Capital Partners acquired Convergent in 2019.

Healthcare focused private-equity firm Lorient Capital has backed the formation of specialized dental practice organization Reveal Dental Partners in partnership with Houmam Ali, former chief operating officer of Guardian Dentistry Partners. Reveal Dental Partners offers dental implant specialists services that include clinical mentorship, integrated lab services and marketing support.

Midmarket firm Leeds Equity Partners has bought Learnosity Holdings, a provider of digital learning assessment software tools. Learnosity was previously backed by Battery Ventures, which invested in the company in 2018, according to Battery’s website.

Del Monte Capital in Houston has invested in Cornerstone On-Site Concrete and Cornerstone Excavating, acquiring a majority interest in both through a recapitalization of the Saginaw, Texas-based businesses. Formed in 2023, Del Monte focuses on backing lower midmarket businesses.

European private-equity firm AnaCap is backing its first deal in The Netherlands with an agreement to invest in DK Accountants & Adviseurs, a Dutch accounting services provider for small and medium sized enterprises. The investment is one of the earliest that AnaCap is making out of its latest main investment fund.

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

Private-equity investor Astorg has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as financial advisers to explore sale options for its investor services business IQ-EQ, Edin Imsirovic reports for sister publication Private Equity News in London, citing people familiar with the matter. The company provides accounting, reporting and compliance functions as well as serving as an adviser, with more than 5,800 employees. Astorg previously raised a €1.3bn continuation fund in 2022 for the business, with investors including AlpInvest and Goldman Sachs.

Centerbridge Partners and Gallatin Point Capital have sold their interests in Tel Aviv-listed Phoenix Financial to buyers including Affinity Partners, which purchased 10% of the asset manager and insurer’s shares. In all, Centerbridge and Gallatin sold 31% of Phoenix’s shares, starting in July and ending this month. The two investors became the company’s controlling shareholders about five years ago.

Thoma Bravo-backed identity security software provider SailPoint has registered for an initial public offering of shares, without saying how many it plans to sell or at what expected price range. Thoma Bravo took the Austin, Texas-based company private in 2022 through a cash transaction valued at approximately $6.9 billion. SailPoint’s systems use machine learning and other technologies to help companies control access and manage identities as part of their security efforts.

Sixth Street Partners in Dallas has added Kay Cossington as head of global women’s football and said she will serve as the founding chief executive of Bay Collective, a multi-club global organization that will officially debut later this year. She joins the firm and Bay Collective from the Football Association in England, where she was technical director. Sixth Street is the majority owner of the Bay Football Club in San Francisco, which the firm capitalized with $125 million at its outset as part of the National Women’s Soccer League.

Bain Capital in Boston has added Mark Fiorentino as a partner with the firm’s venture arm in San Francisco. He joins from Index Ventures, according to his LinkedIn page.

The biggest U.S. public pension has joined with other institutional investors in reviewing relations with private-equity firm Triton following revelations that its founder played spin the bottle shirtless at a corporate party, Sebastian McCarthy reports for sister publication Private Equity News. The $524.24 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the Bikuben Foundation in Denmark and German nuclear waste fund Kenfo all confirmed their awareness of the reported incidents and are reviewing the situation. Triton has commissioned an external consultant to conduct its own “cultural review,” financial newspaper Börsen-Zeitung has reported, citing managing partner Claus von Hermann.

Credit-focused Mount Logan Capital, whose chief executive and co-presidents are all BC Partners executives, has agreed to combine with closed-end fund 180 Degree Capital, which will give the merged business a Nasdaq listing under the Mount Logan name. BC Partners executives Ted Goldthorpe, Matthias Ederer and Henry Wang formed Mount Logan in 2018 and remain with both firms. Goldthorpe heads BC Partners’ credit strategy, with Wang and Ederer as partners with the London-based firm. Toronto-listed Mount Logan manages $2.4 billion of private credit assets while 180 Degree Capital said its net asset value in public securities was $46.2 million as of Jan. 15. The combination has an equity value of about $113.6 million and includes Mount Logan’s insurance assets.

A British court has tossed out claims against TPG and oil pipeline operator Transneft brought by jailed Russian businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov, saying there was “no serious issue to be tried,” Lars Mucklejohn reports for sister publication Financial News in London. Magomedov, who was arrested on embezzlement charges in 2018, sued TPG as well as state-owned Transneft and nuclear energy group Rosatom in 2023, seeking nearly $14 billion over an alleged Kremlin-backed effort to strip him of key assets or acquire them at less than their market price.

Private-equity firms raised the fewest new funds last year in roughly a decade, with the number closing in 2024 falling 39% to 1,821 from the previous year and down 70% from the 6,082 peak reached in 2021, according to research provider S&P Global Market Intelligence. Last year’s total was the lowest since 2013. The total capital raised last year fell 30% to $680.04 billion, which is 39% lower than the nearly $1.12 trillion collected in 2021.

Buyout firm KKR & Co. is investing in Gulf Data Hub as the developer of large computing centers expands across the Middle East, with committed support of more than $5 billion across both KKR and Gulf. KKR is investing in the Dubai-based company through its global infrastructure strategy. Gulf operates seven data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

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

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