Happy Fri-yay, Hubsters! Aaron here to wind down the week. Mega merger. Yesterday, BDT & Company and MSD Partners announced that theyare joining forces. Both are long-term investors with likeminded strategies around founder-led and family-owned companies. For those who don’t know, MSD is a private investment firm that exclusively manages capital for the Dell family, including Michael Dell. The goal behind this tag-team is “not to be the biggest firm, but rather to serve our business-owning clients and investors to the best of our ability,” sources behind the deal told me. This news of course comes on the heels of EQT and Baring Private Equity Asia completing a merger this week to capture growth opportunities in Asia. Might we see more consolidation in the PE space? I know two does not make a trend but if you have thoughts on this topic and strong feelings about what this means for the industry, feel free to reach out to me at aaron.w@peimedia.com. To read more on the EQT and Baring tie-up, check out the coverage at our affiliate site PE Hub Europe here. Familiar faces. GTCR is working with some familiar faces for the Chicago-based firm’s latest platform, Blucrest. As of right now, Blucrest is three people, an idea and a capital commitment from GTCR. Those three people are David Inns, Lynn Herrick and Bill Yates, whom the firm backed in 2017 with the acquisition of GreatCall, a provider of connected health and personal emergency-response services for senior citizens across the US. In their roles as CEO, COO and CMO of GreatCall, the team took the company from pre-revenue in 2006 to an acquisition by Best Buy for $800 million in 2018. I spoke with GTCR’s David Donnini, managing director and head of business and consumer services, and Tom Ehrhart, principal. While GreatCall focused on personal emergency devices, Blucrest will “acquire companies and assets to build a consumer services business focused on products that simplify people’s lives,” said Donnini. Blucrest will avoid personal emergency devices to avoid competing with the team’s prior company. You can read the whole story here. Software surge. If you thought I would go without writing about healthcare, you were wrong! Of course, I need to have at least one item on my favorite sector. Bain & Company released a 2022 healthcare provider IT report and found that software investments remain a top priority for the sector. According to the report, healthcare IT is a top three strategic priority for almost 40 percent of providers and a top five priority for nearly 80 percent. Lots of people are still talking about the Amazon and One Medical deal, something we covered a couple of months ago. The report has a lot to say on that topic. “Big tech players (including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple) have been pushing into healthcare in recent years with targeted offerings and investments,” said the report. “In general, they have focused on building upon core competencies – such as cloud services, data storage, customer relationship management (CRM), consumer devices, and wearables – to fill in the white space rather than going head-to-head with entrenched incumbent enterprise software providers.” You can read the whole report here. That is a wrap for me! I will be back on Monday, pinch-hitting for MK Flynn as she is off on her well-deserved vacation. Wishing everyone a great weekend and here’s hoping the Yankees season is still alive next time I write to you. Cheers, Aaron Read the full wire commentary on PE Hub ... | 