Led by Ares Management, the funding package includes a $5bn term loan and a $500m revolving credit facility. The facility replaces an earlier $5.75bn bridge loan and highlights the growing dominance of direct lenders in large-cap leveraged buyouts, as traditional banks take a reduced role in marquee deals. The financing also drew support from a syndicate of private credit and capital markets firms including Clearlake Capital Markets, Golub Capital, and Blue Owl Capital. Morgan Stanley acted both as arranger and syndication conduit, facilitating participation from asset managers ahead of closing. The transaction showcases private equity's increasing reliance on private credit solutions for large-scale acquisitions. Clearlake originally used a 364-day bridge loan to secure the deal, but refinanced within 60 days, reportedly recouping up to 75% of associated fees. Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....
Politico became one of the first newsrooms last year to win a union contract that included rules on how the media outlet can deploy artificial intelligence. The PEN Guild, which represents Politico and its sister publication, environment and energy site E&E News, is now gearing up for another first. The union's members allege that the AI provisions in their contract have been violated, and they're preparing for a groundbreaking legal dispute with management. The outcome could set a precedent for how much input journalists ultimately have over how AI is used in their newsrooms. Last year, Politico began publishing AI-generated live news summaries during big political events like the Democratic National Convention and the US vice presidential debates. This March, it debuted a suite of AI tools called Policy Intelligence Assistance for paying subscribers, which were built in partnership with the Y Combinator-backed startup Capitol AI. Politico executive Rachel Loeffler described the initiative at the time as 'seamlessly integrating generative AI with our unmatched policy expertise.'...
Less than two weeks before the start of hurricane season, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency rescinded the agency's strategic plan, which includes a document that guides agency priorities when responding to disasters, WIRED has learned. A new plan has yet to be put into place. In a memo sent to FEMA employees on Wednesday, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson wrote, 'The 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan is hereby rescinded. The Strategic Plan contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission. This summer, a new 2026-2030 strategy will be developed. The strategy will tie directly to FEMA executing its Mission Essential Tasks.' The four-year plan, which was issued in 2022 under then-administrator Deanne Criswell, is not a procedural plan for specific disasters, but rather a guiding document for the agency's objectives and priorities. A link to the plan on FEMA's website returned an error message on Wednesday and has not been live since January 2025, according to the Wayback Machine....
In recent months, the model context protocol(MCP) has evolved as one of the most interesting technologies in intelligence (AI). However, there is an interesting alternative pionered by top AI labs that is flying relatively under the radar. The Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) addresses this challenge by enabling seamless interactions among autonomous AI agents. Building on the foundation laid by the Model Context Protocol (MCP), ACP supports more complex, multimodal, and persistent agent-to-agent communications. This essay explores ACP's architecture, its key components'including client-server interactions, agent discovery, lifecycle management, and message structures'and contrasts it with MCP to clarify their roles in the broader AI ecosystem....
