1. China: zero investments from the world’s ten largest firms
On 18 August the Financial Times published an investigation under a blunt headline — “Not worth the squeeze”. Over the first seven months of 2026, ten of the world’s largest private capital firms — Blackstone, Carlyle, Warburg Pincus, TPG, EQT, Bain Capital, Advent International, KKR, Apollo and CVC — made no publicly disclosed equity investments in mainland China. Recent trend: three deals in 2025, two in 2024, and roughly a dozen in 2021 including early-stage funding. FT analysis of Dealogic and PitchBook data; the firms declined to comment.
Exit is as blocked as entry: last year those same ten firms recorded zero publicly disclosed complete divestments from mainland Chinese portfolio companies. Beijing has tightened scrutiny of foreign investment in sensitive sectors — in April it blocked Meta’s $2 billion purchase of Manus, the China-founded, Singapore-based AI start-up; and Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s plan to sell a portfolio of global port operations, including on the Panama Canal, to a BlackRock-led consortium has been delayed after criticism from Chinese authorities. Kher Sheng Lee (AIMA Asia-Pacific) sums up the US LP position: “it’s too much hassle, the juice may not be worth the squeeze.”
The contrast with the rest of the region is stark: Asia-focused fundraising is setting records — EQT recently closed the largest ever dedicated Asia-Pacific fund at $15.6 billion, and Blackstone announced a $13.1 billion Asia fund in June. But as Bryan Koo (Clifford Chance, Hong Kong) notes, “if a western PE fund raises a big Asia fund, usually they say Japan, India and Australia are the focus and China is like 10 per cent.” Advisers now see flows running the other way, increasingly working for Chinese companies seeking deals outside China.
Sources: FT — “‘Not worth the squeeze’: global private equity makes zero deals in China” (18 August 2026)
2. Asking holders to fund their own liquidity
The Shein file illustrates a mechanism that reaches well beyond the company itself. A note on scope: Shein’s cap table is late-stage growth and crossover capital — General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Coatue, D1 Capital, HongShan, IDG Capital, Greenwoods and Brookfield sit alongside Tencent as a corporate investor, with no control and no acquisition leverage. What matters here for private equity is the exit, not the structure.
And Shein (China-founded online fashion retailer, headquartered in Singapore, targeting a Hong Kong listing) is asking its own shareholders to underwrite the very offering meant to give them an exit. Bloomberg reports that Boyu Capital and UBS Asset Management are in talks to act as cornerstone investors, while Tencent and General Atlantic are weighing taking a stake. At least $400 million of stock is set aside for cornerstones, within a roughly $2 billion raise at a $25–28 billion valuation — a third attempt after New York and London collapsed, and a discount of about 73% to the $98.2 billion 2022 peak.
Putting fresh money in to manufacture your own liquidity: the reflex is the same as a continuation fund, in different clothing. And the exit still doesn’t clear — a six-month lock-up for cornerstones, sale restrictions for existing holders. The cost of the wait can be quantified, and the prospectus filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 26 July sets it out: 2025 revenue up just 8% to $41.8 billion, net profit down nearly 39% to about $2.1 billion, and a $99 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026. At the end of the chain sit institutional allocators: Boyu holds its stake through Boyu Capital Fund V, a closed-end vehicle with a finite life, to which the New York State Common Retirement Fund committed $25 million and the Alaska Permanent Fund $40 million.
Sources: Bloomberg — Shein Targets Up to $27 Billion Valuation in Hong Kong IPO (17 August 2026) · Bloomberg — Shein in Talks With Boyu, UBS for Hong Kong IPO Cornerstone Investments (20 August 2026) · Shein, IPO prospectus filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), 26 July 2026
📖 Going further: 29. What is a continuation fund, and why is it so successful?
3. US rural healthcare: the case against sharpens
An op-ed published on 18 August by WyoFile under the byline of Niel Ritchie, past president of the League of Rural Voters: three of Wyoming’s eight privately owned hospitals are now owned by private equity firms, one of the highest proportions in the country. The author calls for state-level safeguards — full disclosure of acquisition debt, scrutiny of real-estate and management-fee arrangements, and tracking of maternity, emergency and behavioural health services.
The piece rests on dated evidence: a Campaign for Accountability report putting the billing premium at $669 per patient at private equity-owned hospitals, a 2023 JAMA study of more than 660,000 hospitalisations finding a 25% increase in complications contracted during the stay — patient falls, bloodstream infections — after a hospital was bought by a private equity firm, even as those same harms were declining nationally, and a 2026 Annals of Surgery study on postoperative mortality at acquired rural hospitals. Worth noting for the French debate: the argument made by the National Assembly’s inquiry into the predation of productive capacity finds its sector-specific counterpart here, backed by a deeper academic record.
Sources: WyoFile — Private equity is already reshaping rural healthcare in Wyoming (18 August 2026) · Private Equity Stakeholder Project — Hospital Tracker · JAMA (2023)
📖 Going further: 8. US Private Equity Under Fire
4. European unicorns: a record worth a closer look
On 21 August PitchBook released data from its Q2 2026 European VC Valuations Report: as of 30 June, European unicorns carried an aggregate post-money valuation — the value assigned to a company immediately after a financing round, including the capital raised — of €609.1 billion across 175 companies worth more than €1 billion, the highest count on record. €15.5 billion was invested across 47 deals in the first half.
PitchBook offers an explanation: the herd is growing first because nothing is leaving it. A unicorn normally drops out of the count by listing or being acquired; with both doors shut, new entrants pile on while the incumbents stay put.
The count itself deserves a closer look, because the data providers do not agree. The Hurun Research Institute, the Shanghai-based Chinese research house, counted 112 unicorns in the European Union worth a combined $415 billion as of 1 January 2026, plus 80 in the United Kingdom tracked separately — 192 across the two. Dealroom, the Amsterdam-based Dutch data platform, counts more than 600 across a wider Europe: 205 in the UK, 88 in Germany, 53 in France, with Israel, Switzerland and Turkey added in. The list published by Failory stops at 217.
Two conventions account for most of the gap: the geographic perimeter — the European Union alone, or Europe plus the UK, Switzerland and Israel; and the treatment of companies that have left the category through a listing or a sale, which some databases strike from the count and others retain. That second point is precisely the one PitchBook invokes to explain the record: the measure depends on the very variable it claims to document.
Sources: PitchBook, a Morningstar company — Europe’s unicorn herd hits an all-time high (21 August 2026) · Q2 2026 European VC Valuations Report (20 August 2026) · Hurun Research Institute — Global Unicorn Index 2026 (25 June 2026) · Dealroom — Unicorn companies by country and sector
📖 Going further: 30. VC vs. Buyout: The American Match in Five Rounds
5. AI: a firm run on artificial intelligence
Ethos Capital is a US manager based in Boston, founded in 2019 by Fadi Chehadé and Erik Brooks, both Abry Partners alumni. It does buyouts, taking majority stakes and control minority positions in the middle market — companies with an enterprise value of $200 million to $2 billion — across supply chain and logistics, insurance and financial services, and digital platforms. It runs a $512 million closed-end fund, co-investment capital and a multi-billion-dollar continuation fund raised recently to house Identity Digital, a company it backed in 2021; that vehicle drew commitments from Accel-KKR, TPG, Neuberger Berman, CVC Capital Partners and Coller Capital.
This is the firm that spent five years building “Petra”, an agent trained on more than 50,000 sources including every deal the firm has looked at — including those it passed on. Petra runs first-pass screening on every deck received, initial diligence, portfolio monitoring and investor relations: what once took two to four weeks now takes about half an hour, for an investment team of a handful of people reviewing 130 to 140 companies a year. The tool is also wired into the firm’s internal life: it reads every email, calendar invite and message exchanged, and routes each piece of information to whoever it judges needs it. “When I log into Petra, it knows me, and it talks to me,” says co-founder Fadi Chehadé — asked how a deal is progressing, it returns a digest calibrated to who is asking. Chehadé rejects the word monitoring: the system captures work product, he says — analysis, notes, models — rather than individuals, under access rules designed around privacy. PitchBook notes it did not speak with the firm’s employees.
The counterpoint appears in the same article. Nitin Gupta (Flexstone Partners) takes the industry’s enthusiasm “with a grain of salt” and warns about hallucination effects; Kyle Griswold (FTV Capital) argues that AI is good at digesting data and screening for targets but does not replace origination work: “We do a ton of hopping on planes and picking up the phone and going to conferences. None of that can be replicated.” The intelligence that comes out of a private conversation with a target’s competitor or customer exists in no database. Chehadé readily concedes the point: the decision to invest or pass stays human.
Sources: PitchBook, a Morningstar company — Meet Petra, the AI that runs a PE firm (21 August 2026) — interview with Fadi Chehadé, co-founder and managing partner of Ethos Capital
References of the week
- Shein, IPO prospectus, Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), 26 July 2026
- PitchBook, a Morningstar company, Q2 2026 European VC Valuations Report, 20 August 2026
- PitchBook, a Morningstar company, Q2 2026 Aerospace & Defense Report: More Deals, Smaller Check Sizes, 20 August 2026
- Campaign for Accountability, Overbilled and Overtreated: Private Equity and the Healthcare Affordability Crisis
- Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Private Equity Hospital Tracker
