WSJ Banking

KKR’s $4.75 billion sale of data-center cooling business CoolIT to Ecolab is poised to be one of the private-equity giant’s most successful bets ever on.wsj.com/4szzSNG

Scoop: X has restructured ahead of SpaceX's impending IPO, firing the CMO hired to turn around relations with advertisers and cutting teams in non-technical roles. Remaining staff have been told to focus on growing revenue. w/@VranicaWSJ wsj.com/tech/elon-musk…

SCOOP: Sheryl Sandberg is leaning back in. The billionaire behind the feminist foundation Lean In has shed about a quarter of its staff and hired a 25 year old as its CEO, with Sandberg hoping to push back against the “tradwife” and manosphere movements. Bridget Griswold, Lean In's new CEO, graduated from Brown University in 2023 and worked at Meta for two years before taking the top job at Lean In. Her rapid ascent—and lack of nonprofit experience—have led some staff to leave. Sandberg is concerned that the “glamorization” of the “tradwife” movement risks reviving the professional guilt women spent decades dismantling. The hope is that a new fresh face and tighter workforce at Lean In will help push against that. Read more about the shake-up inside Lean In in my story with @EmilyGlazer in the link below...

Wall Street is betting on a veteran of both the Marines and bare-knuckle New Jersey politics to fight Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to raise taxes on the wealthy on.wsj.com/40UKLgN

Scoop: KKR bought a bakery chain. 🍰🍰🍰 wsj.com/business/deals…

Big banks like JPMorgan Chase seem to be talking out of both sides of their mouth since the private credit meltdown started in earnest. JPMorgan has shared strategies with hedge fund clients on how to short the industry and restricted private credit funds' access to credit at the bank. The CEO of JPMorgan's investment bank said last month that he was "shocked people were shocked" by withdrawals by retail investors and mounting doubts about the unregulated sector's loan quality. But JPMorgan & all big banks need private funds to bring business to them and participate in their deals, making them a simultaneous mix of client and competitor. The result is Wall Street double-talk. Bank of America, which just announced a private debt strategy of his own, retracted and apologized about a strategy it proposed to investors on shorting the sector. Research analysts later blamed "media attention" for the downturn in the sector. Read more about how banks are on both sides of the turbulence in private credit here: wsj.com/finance/bankin…

Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division, was reviewing HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper when she got a phone call from one of HPE's outside lawyers. “If you don’t approve this settlement, I will destroy you. I will destroy your job at the DOJ,” Mike Davis told her, according to a deposition by her former deputy reviewed by WSJ. (Davis denies making this call) Davis had been Slater’s friend for years and recommended her to President Trump for the job. Now, he was advising HPE—and Slater and her team had proved resistant to the settlement terms he proposed. The fallout was swift. Within months, two of Slater’s deputies were pushed out of the Justice Department. By February, Slater was gone, too. Read our deep dive into the DOJ antitrust division: wsj.com/us-news/law/lo…

SCOOP: Activist Elliott has a multibillion-dollar investment in Synopsys, the big chip-design software maker. $SNPS wsj.com/business/deals…

Breaking: Jeff Bezos is in talks to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would buy manufacturing companies and use AI to automate them wsj.com/tech/jeff-bezo…

SCOOP: Unilever is in talks to separate its food business and combine it with spice maker McCormick. $UL $MKC wsj.com/business/deals…

SCOOP: Ecolab is nearing a deal to acquire data-center cooling company CoolIT Systems from KKR for between $4.5 billion and $5 billion. $ECL wsj.com/business/deals…

Private credit's investor exodus has spread to consumer loans. Redemption requests at a ~$2bn Stone Ridge fund holding loans made by fintech lenders were so high that it would honor only 11% of the amount investors wanted back. wsj.com/finance/invest…

Like millions of Americans, Mark Mason is looking for a new job. Unlike most of them, he’s gunning to be a CEO. on.wsj.com/4by4dF6

Exclusive: The SEC is preparing a proposal to eliminate a requirement for companies to report earnings every quarter. on.wsj.com/3NsFlXd

Trump-friendly investors in the deal to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. are paying the administration a $10 billion fee for arranging the transaction. The deal valued the entity operating TikTok at $14 billion. Friday scoop w/ @miriamgottfried: wsj.com/tech/tiktok-de…

"I literally think all the marks are wrong," Apollo’s John Zito on private equity. Apollo says comment was on software cos. Listen to exclusive excerpts from a recent discussion he had with UBS clients: wsj.com/finance/invest… via @WSJ

Exclusive: Apollo’s John Zito called out “arrogance” in private markets, according to audio recordings of a recent discussion he had with UBS clients. Listen to exclusive excerpts from the conversation. wsj.com/finance/invest… via @WSJ

Exclusive: Apollo’s John Zito called out “arrogance” in private markets, according to audio recordings of a recent discussion he had with UBS clients. Listen to exclusive excerpts from the conversation. on.wsj.com/3P9jdSe

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