This week Washington-based Carlyle Group reported a USD518.8 million fourth-quarter profit on the back of strong asset sales at the end of last year, including its divestment of a 50 per cent stake in streetwear fashion brand Supreme to VF Corporation as part of a USD2.1 billion deal in November.

Carlyle’s December results swung upwards from a loss of USD8.3 million, or 8 cents per share, in the same period of 2019. The better-than-expected figures came largely on the back of the disposal of assets in the global PE-firm’s private equity division and credit businesses.

On Wednesday Apollo reported that its fourth-quarter distributable earnings fell 30 per cent from a year earlier, due to a slowdown in its divestment of PE assets. The fall was smaller than analysts’ expected however, in part due to the performance of its credit and real estate divisions.  

It emerged that the governments of Luxembourg and Cote d’Ivoire will invest a total of EUR10 million into Bamboo Capital Partners’s BLOC Smart Africa, a technology impact fund with a target of EUR100 million. The move follows Cote d’Ivoire’s previous intention to commit EUR5 million to the fund, announced at the UN’s High-Level Political Forum in July 2020.

Meanwhile, SPE Capital Partners closed its North African-focused fund SPE AIF at USD258 million, which exceeded its USD200 million target.

In other news this week, KKR closed a USD4.7billion Global Atlantic deal that saw the group acquire 60 per cent of the company, and Dr Martens will list at 370p a share at a GBP3.7 billion valuation following an offer that was eight times oversubscribed. 

With the continuing economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic suppressing some sectors, the attention of the private equity industry is now even more acutely focused on assets in the resilient SaaS technology sector and on firms that have successfully managed to ‘pivot’ towards digitalising their propositions and underlying business model.

According to Phil Spratt, co-founder of digital intelligence service Deltabase, the digital due diligence process for private equity firms is shifting towards dealing with future-proofing a company. Find out how in his feature for Private Equity Wire this week.

Karin Wasteson
Editor, Private Equity Wire