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Summary List PlacementE-commerce companies have benefitted as people shop from home during the pandemic, and private equity is taking notice. E-commerce M&A grew 50% between 2019 and 2020 with private equity representing 34% of deals (up from 31% in 2019 and 26% in 2018), according to Pitchbook data pulled by investment bank JEGI Clarity.  KKR and Blackstone are gobbling up warehouses while Providence Strategic...

Summary List PlacementIn April, just weeks after the raging coronavirus pandemic threatened to shut down the US economy, Silver Lake Partners and Sixth Street Partners made a bold bet.  The two private investment firms together lent $1 billion to Airbnb, the home-sharing company that was then watching its revenue plunge as people around the world stopped traveling. The loan came with a lofty coupon...

Summary List PlacementEvery few weeks, SpaceX deploys dozens of Starlink satellites into orbit, moving ever closer to realizing its planned fleet of thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of the spacecraft. SpaceX's goal isn't simply to add another arm to its sprawling business. The company wants to build a service that rakes in tens of billions of dollars per year — creating an economic...

Summary List Placement Global market research firm Kantar is planning to cut 10% of US staff as a result of the economic impact of the pandemic, North American CEO Reed Cundiff announced in a town hall meeting on Monday. The cuts will impact about 300 people, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. A Kantar spokesman acknowledged the coming cuts but wouldn't confirm...

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which is among the largest in the world, released investments it bought and sold in the second quarter in an SEC filing. The state-backed Public Investment Fund exited its investments in major US corporates such as Boeing, Facebook, Marriott, and Disney, according to the filing. The wealth fund focused on exchange-traded funds rather than individual investments and invested nearly...

The primary care startup Oak Street Health started trading on Thursday after pricing its shares at $21 apiece. Shares closed up 90% at $40 each. The company will raise a little over $328 million after offering 15.6 million shares. The founders of the company and its backers including General Atlantic hold stakes worth hundreds of millions after the initial public offering. Visit Business Insider's...

Private-equity firms are starting to look a bit more like insurance investor Berkshire Hathaway. KKR this week announced plans to acquire Global Atlantic Financial Group, paying $4.4 billion in a deal that, subject to regulatory approval, would place the insurance giant on KKR's own balance sheet.  It marks the next phase of PE's move into the $30 trillion global insurance industry, as PE shops...

  Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week.  If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here. Accenture is cutting US staff, and top execs just warned of more pain to come as the consulting giant promotes fewer people and...

The investment and venture capital industries have provided few opportunities to entrepreneurs or investors who are women or people of color. Daryn Dodson has a theory about how to change the industry and make it more inclusive. Dodson has formed an investment company called Illumen Capital that backs venture and other investment funds; as part of its investments, Illumen gets fund managers to sign...

Silver Lake Partners is a private-equity firm known for doing leveraged buyouts of tech giants like Dell Technologies and Skype. But this year, the firm has done at least seven deals in which it's taken a minority stake. Altogether it has invested in deals worth a combined $7.3 billion. The big question across Wall Street is whether the deals represent a change in strategy...

Investors have poured billions into student housing, and now the sector's undergoing its first real test.  Student housing providers' performance will largely come down to whether they're focused near small or for-profit schools that could collapse, or near state schools and top-tier universities that will continue to see strong enrollment. The sector's short-term outlook is bumpy, but analysts and executives said they're still optimistic...

While the coronavirus pandemic has made it hard for first-time funds to raise money from investors, The Blackstone Group has been wooing institutions remotely.  CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on an earnings call this week that investors are holding Zoom due diligence calls and forging on with capital commitments.  "I just got an email, I guess, it was two days ago that we just got...

Airbnb will pay more than 10% in interest on the additional funding it just secured from Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The investors were also offered warrants that can convert into stock based on a valuation of $18 billion, a significant drop from Airbnb's previous valuation of $31 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Airbnb announced...

Furloughs have hit AMC Entertainment's corporate headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, two people familiar with the matter have told Business Insider.  A company spokesperson confirmed the furloughs, saying that the plan is "absolutely necessary to preserve cash and to ensure that AMC can reopen our doors once this health crisis has dissipated." The spokesperson said that the action affected all corporate employees, including CEO Aron. ...

Among startups that don't fail, most are acquired instead of going public. Although most startups that are acquired are still purchased by other independent companies, a growing number and proportion are being snatched up by private equity firms. In the past, private equity firms were largely considered bottom feeders, buying up companies on the cheap for their cash flow, but increasingly, they're buying companies...

Private equity firms have invested billions of dollars in US mobile home communities in recent years. In these communities, residents own their homes but rent the land beneath it, leaving them little power to fight rent increases and poor maintenance. In one Florida community, residents are considering legal action as conditions deteriorate and evictions increase. View more episodes of Business Insider Weekly on Facebook....

Hedge fund giant Elliott Management is creating a position to oversee operations of its portfolio companies, according to people familiar with the matter.  It's the latest move that's positioned the activist investor to look more like a buyout shop, as the firm has sprouted a private-equity arm and one source familiar with the matter said it has more "control-type situations" in private equity, public...

Private-equity firms are facing a deal environment that, while challenging in their pursuit of returns, might just help stave off scrutiny of the industry. PE has been blasted with criticism from celebrities like Taylor Swift and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.  2019 marked the year private equity became a punching bag on late-night talk show shows and the Twitter feeds of some politicians who...