On September 1, 2026, Nestlé agreed to sell the core of its U.S. vitamin and supplement business to Yellow Wood Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that invests only in consumer brands, for USD 1.0 billion. In 2021, Nestlé paid USD 5.75 billion for the heart of the same franchise. The Nestlé–Yellow Wood carve-out reads … Read more
HiNature, the Korean owner of the vegan skincare brand Purito Seoul, is a K-beauty company almost no one in Korea has heard of. Roughly 90% of its sales come from Europe and the rest from the Americas, while every unit is made in Korea. Corstone Asia, the Korean private equity firm that bought 100% of … Read more
When the same bidder wins every auction for five years, the room stops being an auction. The price is set not by competition but by the depth of a relationship, and nobody outside the room has tested it. That is the structural question behind SK Horizon, the data center and submarine cable company being demerged … Read more
The KKR Ci FLAVORS acquisition poses a question the export tables cannot answer. In 2025, South Korea’s cosmetics exports reached $11.4 billion and overtook the United States for second place worldwide; Japan ranked eighth. KKR bought in Japan anyway: a domestic-facing haircare group that L Catterton had held for four years. The longest queue on … Read more
What does it cost to buy a life insurer whose loss-absorbing capital is negative? The KDB Life sale, the seventh attempt by state-owned Korea Development Bank (KDB) to sell its South Korean life insurance subsidiary, answers that question precisely. Korea Investment Holdings, parent of Korea Investment & Securities, has been named preferred bidder, and the … Read more
What happens when the cheapest debt a company owns is also the clause that stops anyone from buying it? That is the structural question behind the reported Wendy’s Trian take-private, in which Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management, franchisee Flynn Group and Blue Five Capital are said to be assembling a bid for the US burger … Read more
Every long-term tenant eventually runs the same calculation: when does the rent still to be paid exceed the price of the building? That is the question behind the Bonchon acquisition, in which Thailand’s Minor Food bought the Korean-founded fried chicken franchisor from Korean private equity firm VIG Partners. Buying the building at that point is … Read more
What does a buyer actually own when it acquires a factory that has never sold its own products? That is the structural question behind the Haitai htb sale, in which South Korea’s LG Household & Health Care (LG H&H) is disposing of its loss-making beverage subsidiary, maker of long-running brands such as Galamandeun Bae pear … Read more
Lotte Rental, South Korea’s largest car-rental operator, is being sold to TPG at a lower price than a deal the same sellers agreed a year earlier — and the agreement arrived after the company posted record earnings. The Lotte Rental TPG acquisition therefore poses a structural question, not a valuation one: in a sponsor buyout … Read more
What does a buyer do when the law forbids it from owning the thing it intends to control? In August 2026, Apollo Global Management agreed to take easyJet — the UK-listed European low-cost carrier — private at GBP 7.15 per share, an equity value of approximately GBP 5.7 billion, while capping its own funds’ holding … Read more