Knowledge Base
Tax strategy, healthcare before Medicare, the post-FIRE identity shift, and the financial decisions that get more complicated after you stop earning.
1054 articles — page 33 of 88
Fintech investment banking sits at the intersection of technology infrastructure and capital markets execution. The core distinction from traditional investment banking is not philosophical, it is operational. Where Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley deploy armies of analysts to structure deals, finte
The right private equity analysis tools can compress weeks of due diligence into hours and surface deal signals that manual research misses entirely. But the more useful question for most FATFIRE readers is whether you need these tools at all. The answer depends almost entirely on whether you sit on
The private equity CFO is the operational spine of a fund. For the $5M+ investor evaluating a PE allocation, understanding what that role entails is not career trivia. It is due diligence. The quality of a fund's CFO directly affects your net returns, your reporting transparency, and your exposure t
Cash on cash return in private equity answers one question with no ambiguity: how much cash did you receive relative to the cash you put in? Divide annual distributions by total invested capital. The result is a percentage that ignores accounting adjustments, unrealized gains, and terminal value ass
A private equity operating model is the structured framework a GP uses to improve a portfolio company's financial performance between acquisition and exit. The private equity operating model has become the primary battleground for returns: according to McKinsey's 2024 Global Private Markets Review,
Private equity real estate (PERE) pools capital from institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals into closed-end funds that acquire, manage, and exit real estate assets over a defined hold period, typically seven to ten years. The GP actively creates value through repositioning, developme
Wynnchurch Capital is a Chicago-based middle-market private equity firm managing roughly $5.3 billion in assets across five funds since its 1999 founding. Its edge is operational: the firm targets manufacturers, distributors, and industrial businesses with $50M to $1B in revenue, then improves them
Private equity litigation is not a retail investor problem. When you're committing $5M or more to a fund, you're operating in a world where disputes routinely involve nine-figure valuations, multi-year discovery processes, and legal theories that don't appear in any standard investment advisory disc
Late-stage private equity targets companies that have already won their core market battles: real revenue, proven unit economics, and management teams that have navigated at least one business cycle. The investment thesis is not "will this work?" but "how much further can this go, and what does it t
Bradley Jacobs is one of the most documented serial operators in American business history. He built United Rentals from scratch in 1997, took it public on the NYSE, and later founded XPO Logistics in 2011, growing it from a $150 million market cap into a global freight giant. What he is not, at lea
Buy and build private equity is a structured acquisition strategy where a sponsor acquires a platform company, then systematically purchases smaller add-on businesses to consolidate a fragmented market. The math is straightforward: buy add-ons at 4x–6x EBITDA, exit the combined entity at 8x–12x. The
The core distinction in public equity vs private equity comes down to three things: access, liquidity, and control. Public equity means owning shares in companies traded on exchanges. Private equity means owning stakes in companies that are not. Everything else, including the return profiles, tax tr