Thomas Seifert

The deal market is recovering. The execution gap is not. According to Alvarez & Marsal's 2026 Value Creation Survey, 89% of PE investors, operating partners, and portfolio company executives describe the North America deal market as moderately or highly active. That headline reads as optimism. The data underneath it does not. Forty-one percent of those same respondents report realizing less than 75% of planned value creation over the last 12 months. In an environment where holding periods are already extended and exit windows remain narrow, missing three-quarters of your value creation plan is not a rounding error. It is the story of the hold. The gap is not a strategy problem. Most sponsors enter deals with credible theses. It is an execution problem, specifically the distance between what diligence assumes and what the organization actually delivers once the clock starts. Fewer than one in four respondents embed value creation planning before a letter of intent. That means the operational blueprint, the KPIs, the management bandwidth requirements, and the leadership profile needed to execute are all being defined after the commitment has been made. I've seen this sequence play out in healthcare services more than anywhere else. The complexity of running a multi-site clinical platform, managing payor relationships, and retaining a clinical workforce under cost pressure does not reveal itself in a financial model. It reveals itself in year two, when the original thesis meets operational reality and the leadership team that was right at close may not be the right team for what the business has become. The gap is rarely about effort or intent. It is almost always about whether the team's collective capability matches the operational demands of the next phase of the hold. The sponsors closing this gap are not doing anything exotic. They are building repeatable operating mechanisms, moving value creation planning earlier in the process, and treating leadership selection as part of the execution infrastructure rather than a separate workstream. That sequence is not optional anymore. In this environment, it is the margin of difference between a return and a recapitalization.

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For years after the public release of ChatGPT the public markets refused to see any risk of AI in software valuations. Now they seem to only see risk. Both answers are wrong! AI will be market expanding for technology providers and creates big opportunity but also a new category of competitor and disruption to weather. This will be a dynamic time! Happy to contribute to Bloomberg's piece on this: https://lnkd.in/g-rGmJ25

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Activist Investor Galloway Capital Partners Buys 6.01% of Noodles & Company "The filing further said that Galloway “intends to engage the board and management” regarding share performance, operations, management, governance — including potential changes to the board of directors — conflicted party transactions, capital allocation policies, and strategy." #activistinvesting #shareholderactivism #corporategovernance https://lnkd.in/gJr3tFgJ

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Some very welcome news for VC and PE firms, as well as other entities investing in startup and emerging growth companies. The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has announced the suspension of the implementation and enforcement of the data collection and reporting regime imposed by the Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law (FIPVCC). This decision comes pending the completion of a rule-making process initiated by the DFPI in response to feedback from stakeholders affected by the regime. As a result, the DFPI will not require covered entities to submit further registrations or file reports by the April 1, 2026 deadline. For more information, visit the DFPI website: https://lnkd.in/eqjJbSFz

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Meta just paid $6.5 billion in extra financing costs to keep $27 billion of data center debt off its balance sheet. Read that again. They built a $30 billion data center in Louisiana through a special purpose vehicle financed by Blue Owl, Pimco, BlackRock, and Apollo. Meta only owns 20% of the vehicle. The rest of the risk sits with private credit. Oracle did the same thing with $38 billion tied to its OpenAI partnership. xAI raised $20 billion the same way, with debt secured against Nvidia chips. And here's the part that should make everyone uncomfortable... Morgan Stanley estimates hyperscalers could raise $400 billion in corporate bonds in 2026 alone. JPMorgan says AI and data center firms now make up 14.5% of its $10 trillion investment-grade bond index. That's $1.5 trillion in debt exposure. These data centers are being financed on 20-year demand assumptions. OpenAI isn't even expected to be profitable until later this decade. The risk isn't sitting on Big Tech's balance sheet. It's sitting with pension funds, insurance companies, and private credit vehicles. Nobody on LinkedIn is talking about this because it's not a sexy headline. But it's the single most important financial dynamic in the data center space right now. *Used AI to generate this image*

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