Morning Hubskis! This is Chris, on the Wire for this chilly Thursday. Lots of good market intel at the Global Private Capital Conference 2023 conference way down in the wilds of Battery Park City this week. I always find it valuable to get a sense of how private equity pros in the rest of the world are thinking about the market and opportunities. You can read my thoughts on the conference in the full version of the Wire. Supply chain: Accel-KKR recently backed Loftware, which provides cloud-based enterprise software to manage companies’ labeling. Loftware’s software stores information in barcodes, which helps shippers, carriers, manufacturers, warehouse inventory managers, grocery stores and other stakeholders in the supply chain ecosystem move goods accurately and in a timely fashion, Park Durrett, managing director with Accel-KKR, told PE Hub reporter Obey Martin Manayiti. M&A impacts: I chatted recently with an M&A lawyer about what’s changing with transactional activity. A year or more ago, GPs were rushing to get portfolio companies prepped for sales in anticipation of the market decline. Now, managers are telling portfolio companies to hunker down, pay attention to operations and cash flows and don’t get distracted by a potential sale. What this means is transactions are taking longer. “People will take time to run full processes and get it absolutely baked instead of looking for things like preempts,” the lawyer said. “GPs are saying, 'we don’t want to overly burden you. We want to launch [a sale] in a manner that shows we’re totally ready to sell'. Buyers that turn up in half-baked processes in this market will run a mile,” the attorney said. Signs n’ signals: Drama erupted at a Marin County pension investment committee meeting over what is usually a routine fund term extension request. Abbott Capital had requested a two-year extension on its 2008 flagship fund-of-funds. Such requests are generally rubber-stamped, though they also may lead to negotiations around fees. This time, however, the investment committee denied the request, citing uncertainty around valuations. The fund-of-funds had performed well – Marin County committed $100 million and received $154 million in distributions so far. That’s it for me! Hit me up with tips n’ gossip, feedback or book recommendations at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn. Read the full wire commentary on PE Hub ... | 