A $1.4bn seat at the table

Private equity usually meets the next owner near the end.

CD&R is bringing a possible next owner in at the beginning.

McKesson plans to invest $1.4 billion alongside it in Option Care Health. The arrangement even includes a framework for McKesson to buy CD&R’s interest later.

Most exit plans have a slide of buyer logos. This one has a proposed co-owner.

But there’s a catch: a partner who helps make the business more valuable can also make it harder to sell to anyone else.

That’s our lead this week. Also inside: Boots gets a different kind of owner, and Clarion’s acquisition multiple shrinks without its price getting cheaper.

THE DEAL TICKER · OCTOBER 5–9

OWNERSHIP

CD&R and McKesson have agreed to acquire Option Care Health for $5.8 billion in enterprise value. At closing, CD&R would own approximately 51%; McKesson, 49%. The home and alternate-site infusion provider would retain its own management team. The announcement describes a possible subsequent purchase of CD&R’s stake by McKesson, subject to conditions and regulatory approval.

My read: the interesting part isn’t just that someone might buy the business later. It’s that this someone can help the business now.

McKesson brings specialty-pharma capabilities. Option Care brings a clinical delivery network. The operating question is whether those capabilities combine into a better service for patients, providers and drug manufacturers, rather than simply a more elaborate ownership chart.

A buyer who can improve the asset is worth more than a buyer who merely likes it.

For a fund, this suggests a different sourcing question: who has the missing capability, and would they invest before we’ve built the finished product?

Consider a maintenance-services platform partnering with an equipment manufacturer: installed-base access on one side, service capacity on the other. The test is paid work the combination can win, not two sales teams exchanging spreadsheets.

The trade-off deserves its own underwriting. If the company becomes optimized around one strategic partner, what happens to other commercial relationships? Who controls investment decisions? Can another buyer still compete at exit?

An early strategic investor can help you build a better company. It can also leave you with a very good company and a very short buyer list.

CARVE-OUTS

There are two ways to change a business: improve what’s inside it, or change what belongs inside it.

Boots is a useful example of the second.

Sycamore established the Boots Group as a private standalone company in August 2025. This week, Wittington and Fairfax agreed to acquire a narrower perimeter for $8.9 billion, including assumed debt. Mexico’s Farmacias Benavides and Alliance Healthcare Deutschland remain with the sellers. Transaction details.

“One year ago, we re-established Boots as a standalone company,” said Stefan Kaluzny, managing director of Sycamore, in that announcement.

The new lead owner is not starting from a blank sheet. Wittington controls the corporate chain above Loblaw, which acquired Shoppers Drug Mart in 2014.

That history makes pharmacy-and-beauty retail a more credible buyer fit. It does not make Canadian execution automatically transferable to Britain.

Here is the sourcing lesson I’d take: look for businesses whose corporate boundary hides their natural owner.

A consumer brand bundled with wholesale distribution. A service operation attached to a manufacturer. A profitable regional business competing for capital against its parent’s glamorous division.

The tempting spreadsheet says “separate it.” The useful diligence asks whether it can actually stand alone: procurement, systems, working capital, licenses, people. Separation can reveal a great business. It can also reveal costs that were buried in the parent.

Start with the buyer’s operating advantage. Then work backward to the perimeter that makes that advantage usable.

DEAL MATH

Informa’s proposed purchase of Blackstone-owned Clarion carries a £2.24 billion enterprise value, including tax benefits.

The buyer presents it as 11.1× expected 2027 EBITDA, approximately 9× with cost synergies and approximately 8× with cost and revenue synergies. Informa’s announcement.

Same purchase. Three denominators.

The price hasn’t gone on sale. The buyer expects to earn more from what it bought.

That expectation has an operating shape: shared event delivery and procurement, plus taking established event brands into more markets. Informa targets roughly £50 million of annual operating synergies and £25 million of additional operating profit from revenue opportunities, fully realized in 2029.

Clarion was already international when Blackstone acquired it in 2017. The interesting question isn’t whether Informa can discover globalization. It’s whether its existing distribution and infrastructure make the next expansion cheaper or more productive.

For sellers, this is a much stronger pitch than “we have lots of growth opportunities.”

Show a buyer an opportunity it can exploit better than you can. Show why. Then show the work you have already done to make that opportunity executable.

For buyers, reverse the exercise: what survives if the synergy plan is late?

An 8× story can be attractive. Paying today for profits that arrive in 2029 is still paying today.

INFRASTRUCTURE

OCU: buy the whole job. Triton agreed to sell OCU to TDR after a hold that included 18 acquisitions. The company expanded its engineering and delivery capabilities, and revenue rose from £295 million in FY2022 to £1.2 billion in FY2026. Triton’s account.

The investment question: does owning more of a project remove coordination headaches for customers, or simply put those headaches on your payroll? Underwrite hand-offs, project margins and cash conversion, not just the larger contract.

AID: the AI trade has pumps. Kohlberg completed a majority investment in Advanced Industrial Devices, buying from Black Bay. AID supplies motor-control and power-distribution systems for critical infrastructure, including data centers. Kohlberg’s announcement.

There’s a world of difference between selling something a data center uses and owning a recurring service bottleneck. My first questions would be replacement demand, field-service capacity and customer concentration. “AI exposure” is not a business model.

FROM THE EXIT FILE

Gen II: the revenue you did not buy. Our latest piece asks how acquisitions can change the mandates a fund administrator is able to win, rather than merely adding the revenue it already has. Read the full reconstruction.

TAKE IT TO IC

Skip the slide titled “strategic buyers.” Pick one actual buyer and finish three sentences:

The point is not to build a company for one acquirer. It is to understand which improvements make the company better in your hands and especially valuable in someone else’s.

Your IC vote: would you bring a strategic investor in at entry, or preserve a wider exit auction? Hit reply with the condition that would change your answer.

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Selected developments from October 5–9, 2026. Agreements are not completed acquisitions unless explicitly labeled. Analysis and hypothetical applications are ours; primary sources are linked beside the facts.

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