One scoop to start: Goldman Sachs has slashed the investment minimum by 90 per cent for a new alumni vehicle that will put money into the Wall Street bank’s private market funds, according to people briefed on the matter.

And a big job move: KKR is shaking up governance at the public relations firm FGS Global it now controls. It is creating a global executive board to be led by new independent chair Homayoun Hatami from McKinsey and a shareholder committee that will be run by FGS co-founder Roland Rudd. The firm’s executive committee is led by chief executive Alex Geiser.

In today’s newsletter:

Jared Kushner’s global empire in the era of Trump

During Donald Trump’s first presidency his son-in-law Jared Kushner was involved in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the response to the coronavirus pandemic, a blockade in the Middle East, and the normalisation of relations between Israel and Gulf countries.

It propelled Kushner’s profile from a property developer best known for his years-long effort to salvage a $1.8bn investment in a Manhattan office tower and into a global power broker with deep access to the key players in the Middle East and the highest rungs of finance.

On his way out of the White House, Kushner translated his Rolodex into a multibillion-dollar business, a private equity firm called Affinity Partners that mostly invests cash for the state-backed investment vehicles of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

In a Big Read, the FT examined the ambitions Kushner has for this nascent but lucrative private investment empire and the potential conflicts of interest that could arise in Trump’s second term.

Affinity has gained attention from those on Wall Street to Washington since it was launched in January 2021.

Democrats have viewed the vehicle suspiciously and called for investigations into the fund. The fledgling firm’s initial $2bn fundraising mostly from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Kushner befriended, took many by surprise.

Now, Kushner is poised to seize the moment.

He will not take a formal role in the Trump White House this time around, freeing him to focus on his family and investments. Those investments range from high-profile property deals in the Balkans, to companies benefiting from artificial intelligence to bets on new trade dynamics in a deglobalising world.

Some deals, such as an ongoing negotiation for a waste management company in Mexico, may be derailed by Trump’s trade policies.

In an interview, Kushner laid out his vision for Affinity and his response to lawmakers who have characterised his outfit as a pay-to-play operation for foreign governments to gain influence with Trump.

In its first few years, Affinity invested sparingly, deploying less than half of its capital, moderate activity that Kushner says was a result of fears over corporate valuations.

The firm, which employs about 30 people and has seen staff churn, avoids buying companies outright, preferring minority equity stakes. Kushner views it as a more nimble investment operation that minimises administrative burdens. It is also lucrative for Kushner, the majority owner of Affinity.

So far, Affinity’s results are inconclusive. While some deals have gained in value, others like a stake in an Amazon aggregator backed by Adam Neumann have a cloudy outlook.

Kushner is now planning billions in new investments and recently struck two prominent deals, building stakes in Israeli insurer Phoenix Financial and billionaire Brad Jacobs’ acquisition vehicle QXO.

Notably, Kushner views the Phoenix deal as helping to build regional ties among potential adversaries. In it, he is ploughing cash from Saudi, Qatari and the UAE directly into Israel’s markets. A UAE fund had tried to invest in Phoenix in 2023, but was blocked by Israeli regulators.

Kushner says to his critics: “A lot of these people will say everything is a conflict. I am not going to let that stop me.”

He adds: “These guys won’t acknowledge [that] I have an incredible track record of success in the Middle East . . . I have those great relationships because of the success that I achieved, which was something that I was criticised for trying to do at every step along the way.”

An old-school private equity brawl

Bain Capital and KKR are engaging in the type of all-out fight in Japan that demands comparisons to the heyday of private equity in the US in the 1980s.

It centres on Fuji Soft, an IT services shop with a juicy non-core property portfolio and the kind of mid-range profit margins that suggest a turnaround is doable.

One banker in Tokyo, wondering how exactly the $4bn battle for control of the company would turn out, mused about what might be the best Japanese translation for Barbarians at the Gate.

It’s the differences in Japan that make this particular case unique. Boards in the country make decisions using a much wider range of criteria than price alone.

Fuji Soft’s board has leaned heavily on the fact that KKR has already bought a blocking stake from activist investors, in order to justify its repeated rejection of Bain’s higher bids.

Yet Bain, backed by Fuji Soft’s founding family, has decided to press ahead without the board’s approval, another highly unusual move in Japan.

The group has questioned the independence of a special committee set up by Fuji Soft to evaluate and recommend offers, suggesting it has been unduly influenced by the activists and that this means it is wrong to call its latest offer “hostile”.

If Bain and KKR emerge with their hard-won reputations in Japan intact, their fight could presage further bloody contests between global private equity firms.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one senior dealmaker in Tokyo who has worked with both buyout firms. “Honestly, we’d prefer to just stay out of it.”

CVC’s make-or-break moment in America

It’s not easy for European groups to break into the crowded world of US private equity. CVC Capital Partners, one of two giants that represent Europe among the world’s top buyout groups, is making a new push to do so.

Having impressed public markets, which are valuing shares in CVC 50 per cent higher than when the group first listed in Amsterdam last April, the group’s top brass is reckoning with what they must do to match the trajectories of Blackstone and other longtime public American peers.

CVC is on the hunt to buy a US private credit group and potentially a private markets real estate company outside of Europe, in an attempt to increase its fee-earning assets under management — the revenue stream needed to satisfy public shareholders.

Meanwhile, CVC has replaced its longtime lead US dealmaker, Chris Stadler, with two top partners from the London office — Lorne Somerville, co-head of strategic opportunities, and Cathrin Petty, head of healthcare.

The move follows some underwhelming investments struck on Stadler’s watch, three people familiar with the matter told DD’s Alexandra Heal, Arash Massoudi and Kaye Wiggins.

In his new role as CVC’s chair of North America, Stadler will no longer be responsible for bringing in new deals. He will instead focus on helping to generate better returns from some existing portfolio companies.

To be sure, some investments in the country have gone well. But the group has only exited six out of 25 US investments made from the four flagship buyout funds it has launched since 2008. One investor in the funds said the US has “clearly been an underperforming part of CVC for a while” and that “trying to craft what CVC is in the US, rather than just another firm, is a challenge”.

One reader commented on the FT’s story over the weekend that the US is a “graveyard for aspiring non-US financial firms”. CVC is staking its reputation on that not being true.

Job moves

• Permira has hired Chris Buchanan as partner and global head of capital formation and Nader Salman as managing director and head of the Middle East for the firm’s capital formation team. 

• Latham & Watkins has hired John Sobolewski as its global head of liability management. He previously worked for Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.

• Cinven has named Philipp Meyer a partner. He joins from the Carlyle Group, where he was co-head of healthcare in Europe.

Smart Reads

High-wire act Most companies are looking for a middle ground between quitting diversity, equity and inclusion programmes and provoking conservative activists, the FT reports.

Musk acolytes Companies from Boeing to Amazon are cosying up to the world’s richest man as he seeks to remake the US government and deepens his ties to the White House, the FT writes.

Gates sit-down The New Yorker’s David Remnick sits down with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to discuss vaccine scepticism, his fellow billionaires near the White House and what he talked about at a recent dinner with Trump.

News round-up

Starboard Value pushes medical device maker Becton Dickinson to spin off unit (FT)

Activist Elliott built stake in Smiths Group ahead of break-up announcement (FT)

Freshfields breaks £2bn revenue barrier as US investment pays off (FT)

BT braces for two-day strategy meeting with billionaire investor Mittal (FT)

Thames Water and Altice set to push European high yield default rate to highest since 2008 (FT)

Meta’s investment in VR and smart glasses on track to top $100bn (FT)

Vanguard puts pressure on rivals with large round of fee cuts (FT)

Anthropic makes ‘jailbreak’ advance to stop AI models producing harmful results (FT)