the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

No matter where you stand on climate change, there's no doubt the the ocean currents drive global weather. The continued underfunding of NOAA is quite disturbing for all of us who live and recreate on the oceans...

As NOAA funding lags, a critical ocean weather system nears a breaking point​

Officials warn that if regional Integrated Ocean Observing System readings go dark, coastal forecasts will become less precise, endangering commercial fishermen, cargo ships and coastal communities.

Years of underfunding and new delays in federal grantmaking threaten buoys and ocean monitoring assets run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that protect fishermen, cargo ships and endangered species across the country. With key grant deadlines now passed and new awards still pending, regional operators warn that some of those services could go dark at the peak of hurricane season.

In the Northeast Channel, where warm, salty Gulf Stream waters collide with frigid meltwater from the Arctic, sensors that hung from a buoy like ornaments on a tree were stationed at the entrance to the Gulf of Maine. The sensors fed scientists and forecasters rare data from one of the Atlantic’s strangest crossroads.

But in 2022, the buoy’s operator, the Northeast Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS), was forced to pull it from the water as stagnant federal funding made routine servicing impossible. Faced with hard choices, the group prioritized buoys closer to shore that are more critical for marine safety over the Northeast Channel buoy, which primarily supported research.

Unlike many NOAA programs, the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)—“the eyes of our ocean,” a network of regional associations that collect and track ocean data—enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. But year after year, federal appropriations have fallen short of what the program needs to properly service and maintain its buoys, sensors, gliders and other equipment.

After the program was authorized by Congress in 2009, an independent study found that the program would need about $715 million to deliver on lawmakers’ vision. Since that study, the most the program has received is $42.5 million—a level it has effectively been stuck at for years.

That number was always ambitious and would require slow, steady growth, according to Kristen Yarincik, executive director of the IOOS Association, a nonprofit organization that represents the 11 regional IOOS associations. But flat funding in recent years, combined with inflation and rising equipment costs, has made routine servicing and upgrades increasingly difficult.

This year, federal appropriations may offer some relief, matching the IOSS Association’s $56 million request—but only if the money actually moves on time. IOOS regions operate on five-year cooperative agreements with NOAA; the current agreements, covering 2021–2026, end on June 30 for most regions.

IOOS sources say the next round of funding may be delayed by new layers of federal review within the Department of Commerce and the Office of Management and Budget. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Congress has not passed a full-year appropriations package, leaving agencies to operate under the president’s budget proposal, which zeroes out IOOS.

“It’s so important that Congress finalize a full-year appropriations package for 2026 as soon as possible,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), a member of the House Committee on Appropriations. “Both the House and the Senate have proposed a funding increase for IOOS Regional Observations, and it’s my sincere hope that both chambers will push the Administration to adopt these spending levels.”

Regional associations say they need to submit proposals by the end of January. Because Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) to federal contractors are legally required to stay open for about 60 days, they need to have been published by the end of November to avoid problems next summer, according to Yarincik. “After that, the timeline, and therefore continuity of data collection, becomes at risk,” she said.

As of early December, those NOFOs still have not been released. The question now is how long awards will be delayed, and how long a funding gap may persist come July.

“They are a ways behind on this,” said Jake Kritzer, executive director of NERACOOS. According to Kritzer and Yarincik, NOFOs are typically published a year before the start date, making this round more than six months late. If a funding gap arises because of the delay, it would only exacerbate problems IOOS regional associations are already struggling with.

In the Northeast, buoys that lobstermen and cargo ships rely on are starting to show their age, Kritzer said. “Think of it like a car,” he said. “It may last 10 or 20 years, but over time the maintenance becomes more and more expensive.” And replacing an old buoy requires even more money up front.

While the Gulf of Maine has lost a number of buoys, those that remain aren’t being serviced frequently enough. Buoys that should be serviced five times a year may see only a single visit, according to Kritzer. As sensors float at different depths, salt and biofouling buildup can degrade data quality, and sometimes the instruments go dark for hours or even days.

“If one of our buoys goes offline, I hear about it from fishermen before our data guys or sensor technicians,” Kritzer said. “What that tells me is that even a short outage really affects people.”

Fishermen use subsurface temperature data to find the most cost-effective places to fish and rely even more on IOOS data to decide whether it’s safe to leave the dock at all.

“Maine lobstermen monitor the buoy readings and NERACOOS data products daily to understand sea conditions, make informed decisions about when it is safe to leave the dock, and be prepared for the conditions they will face at sea,” the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) said in a statement. “It directly impacts their ability to determine whether or not it is safe to go fishing.”

The association also noted that NERACOOS data helps protect lobster populations and other sea life, including endangered whales, from human impacts. Sensors that monitor algal blooms and zooplankton help ensure lobsters have enough prey to feed on. Water-quality monitoring tracks pollution that can harm marine life. And acoustic monitoring systems help keep ships away from migrating whales.

Cargo ships depend on that same real-time wave and wind data to plan safe transit in and out of port, avoid dangerous seas and reduce costly delays. “Congress and NOAA should continue to fund and efficiently administer the IOOS and other navigation programs for the safe and efficient operations of our maritime industry,” said a representative from the American Association of Port Authorities.

IOOS data supplements the National Weather Service’s own observation networks, sharpening coastal forecasts for local communities. The National Weather Service can still draw on its radars, satellites and other federal, military and private data, but IOOS-backed tide gauges and wave buoys help monitor flood risk and storm surge—data that allows emergency management to make more informed decisions.

IOOS officials warn that if regional systems go dark, many coastal forecasts would become less precise and less locally tuned.

But the work that allows lobstermen to empty their traps, cargo ships to safely reach port, and coastal communities to get accurate flood warnings depends on steady funding.

Supplementary funding sources can help keep IOOS regions afloat if a funding gap is realized, but IOOS leaders warn even a one- to two-month lapse in federal support could delay maintenance and force key services to go dark.

If that happens, Yarincik said, “the availability of real-time data and accuracy of data products will be reduced, at a minimum, and this will impact navigational safety for commercial shipping, fishermen and recreational boaters; local flood monitoring for coastal communities; and weather forecasting, especially for hurricane intensity forecasts.”

IOOS helps supply the water-temperature data forecasters use to gauge how intense hurricanes may become. A funding gap next summer could hit just as hurricane season reaches its height, leaving lives and entire coastal communities vulnerable.
 
Holy Crap, although I don't have a dog in this fight, not a bit fond of bourbon as I prefer my whisky spelled without the "e"...

Jim Beam Halts Production, as Whiskey Market Struggles​

The bourbon giant is closing its flagship distilling operation for all of 2026.

Jim Beam, the country’s largest maker of bourbon, has announced a one-year pause in production at its flagship facility in Clermont, Ky., a stunning move that underlines the immense challenges facing the American whiskey industry after more than two decades of rapid growth.

The decision by the brand, owned by the Japanese conglomerate Suntory Holdings, is the latest in a series of production cuts, layoffs and financial crises across the wine, beer and spirits sector, which has seen sales drop by about 5 percent over the past year.

The situation will likely get worse as 2025 draws to a close: At the end of October MGP Ingredients, which distills whiskey on contract for other brands, reported a 19 percent drop in sales for the third quarter.

In September, the global drinks company Diageo paused distillation at its Cascade Hollow facility in Tullahoma, Tenn., which produces George Dickel Tennessee whiskey. In January, Brown-Forman, the maker of whiskeys like Jack Daniel’s and Old Forester, announced it was laying off about 650 employees, or 12 percent of its work force, in the face of declining demand.

And over the last year several large whiskey companies have gone into receivership, including the Garrard County Distilling Co. in Kentucky and Uncle Nearest in Tennessee.

In a statement, Jim Beam said that the pause would begin on Jan. 1 and last the entire year. The facility produces about a third of the company’s annual output of approximately 26.5 million gallons.

It also said it would continue production at its two other distilleries in Kentucky and would keep its bottling facility and visitor center open at the Clermont site. It did not say whether the workers at the distillery would be furloughed or moved to other facilities.

Both the Clermont distillery and another, larger facility, located in nearby Boston, Ky., produce most of Jim Beam’s subsidiary brands, including Knob Creek, Booker’s and Basil Hayden. The third, much smaller distillery, also located in Clermont, is for experimental and limited-edition brands.

It will also continue production at the Maker’s Mark distillery in Loretto, Ky., which it also owns.

The sudden, steep decline in bourbon sales comes after more than 20 years of expansion in American whiskey, which regularly reached 5 percent in annual growth. It went from about $1.4 billion in sales in 2004 to about $5.2 billion in 2024, according to data from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group.

American whiskey proved especially popular during the pandemic. Consumers stuck at home with spare cash and time fueled an explosion in collecting and buying bottles through auctions and online via informal (and often illegal) markets.

In response, distilleries boosted production, putting aside millions of barrels to age, announcing multimillion-dollar expansions and flooding the market with new products. Today there are an estimated 16.1 million barrels of whiskey aging across Kentucky. A standard barrel holds 53 gallons, though a significant amount is lost to evaporation during aging.

Much, but not all, of that whiskey came from big legacy producers like Jim Beam. But it also came from a relatively new category of distilleries that produce on contract for customers and investors, who saw the quick growth in whiskey as an easy and fun way to make money.

It was likely, industry experts say, that a correction was in order as retailers and consumers, flush with inventory, slowed down their purchases and the market returned to normal after the pandemic buying spree.

Analysts also cite recent economic challenges related to President Trump’s tariffs. A backlash from Canadian consumers and provinces, which control alcohol sales, has virtually stopped the sale of American whiskey in what was once among the industry’s biggest export markets.

Overall, exports of American whiskey are down about 9 percent from 2024, according to the Distilled Spirits Council.

At the same time, the president’s unpredictable approach to tariff policy has made it difficult to expand into new markets, especially South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, three regions that major American whiskey distillers had once hoped to turn into reliable destinations for millions of bottles a year.

Consumer behavior has also changed rapidly in recent years as the first members of Gen Z reach drinking age.

Polls show that not only are young consumers drinking less, but they are trading up as well, choosing high-proof, more expensive bottles to drink sparingly. That is a big problem for Jim Beam, which relies heavily on its inexpensive, lower-proof White Label brand for sales.

“The data show that people don’t want 80 proof whiskey like Jim Beam White Label,” said Fred Minnick, a whiskey expert and the author of the forthcoming book “Bottom Shelf: How a Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life.” “What they continue to buy are elevated brands.”

That explains why, even as Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s pull back, companies like Sazerac, which makes luxury whiskeys like George T. Stagg and Pappy Van Winkle, continue to grow. In October, Sazerac announced a $1 billion expansion, primarily at its Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort, Ky.

Mr. Minnick added that in many ways, this was a story that Kentucky distillers have heard before.

By the mid-1960s, bourbon production was at a similar record high, fueled by the prolific alcohol consumption of the “Mad Men” era. But as baby boomers reached adulthood, they turned away from whiskey in favor of vodka and rum, or away from alcohol together.

The result was a decades-long stretch of oversupply and cratering demand, resulting in the closure of dozens of distilleries across the country.

Given the continued economic and cultural headwinds, the pause at Jim Beam is both a sign of how bad things have gotten for the industry and a harbinger of more shutdowns to come.

“It’s a sad day for bourbon, to be honest with you,” Mr. Minnick said. “For this to happen is a real punch in the gut.”
 
Roccus7 said:
Holy Crap, although I don't have a dog in this fight, not a bit fond of bourbon as I prefer my whisky spelled without the "e"...

Jim Beam Halts Production, as Whiskey Market Struggles​

The bourbon giant is closing its flagship distilling operation for all of 2026.

Jim Beam, the country’s largest maker of bourbon, has announced a one-year pause in production at its flagship facility in Clermont, Ky., a stunning move that underlines the immense challenges facing the American whiskey industry after more than two decades of rapid growth.

The decision by the brand, owned by the Japanese conglomerate Suntory Holdings, is the latest in a series of production cuts, layoffs and financial crises across the wine, beer and spirits sector, which has seen sales drop by about 5 percent over the past year.

The situation will likely get worse as 2025 draws to a close: At the end of October MGP Ingredients, which distills whiskey on contract for other brands, reported a 19 percent drop in sales for the third quarter.

In September, the global drinks company Diageo paused distillation at its Cascade Hollow facility in Tullahoma, Tenn., which produces George Dickel Tennessee whiskey. In January, Brown-Forman, the maker of whiskeys like Jack Daniel’s and Old Forester, announced it was laying off about 650 employees, or 12 percent of its work force, in the face of declining demand.

And over the last year several large whiskey companies have gone into receivership, including the Garrard County Distilling Co. in Kentucky and Uncle Nearest in Tennessee.

In a statement, Jim Beam said that the pause would begin on Jan. 1 and last the entire year. The facility produces about a third of the company’s annual output of approximately 26.5 million gallons.

It also said it would continue production at its two other distilleries in Kentucky and would keep its bottling facility and visitor center open at the Clermont site. It did not say whether the workers at the distillery would be furloughed or moved to other facilities.

Both the Clermont distillery and another, larger facility, located in nearby Boston, Ky., produce most of Jim Beam’s subsidiary brands, including Knob Creek, Booker’s and Basil Hayden. The third, much smaller distillery, also located in Clermont, is for experimental and limited-edition brands.

It will also continue production at the Maker’s Mark distillery in Loretto, Ky., which it also owns.

The sudden, steep decline in bourbon sales comes after more than 20 years of expansion in American whiskey, which regularly reached 5 percent in annual growth. It went from about $1.4 billion in sales in 2004 to about $5.2 billion in 2024, according to data from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group.

American whiskey proved especially popular during the pandemic. Consumers stuck at home with spare cash and time fueled an explosion in collecting and buying bottles through auctions and online via informal (and often illegal) markets.

In response, distilleries boosted production, putting aside millions of barrels to age, announcing multimillion-dollar expansions and flooding the market with new products. Today there are an estimated 16.1 million barrels of whiskey aging across Kentucky. A standard barrel holds 53 gallons, though a significant amount is lost to evaporation during aging.

Much, but not all, of that whiskey came from big legacy producers like Jim Beam. But it also came from a relatively new category of distilleries that produce on contract for customers and investors, who saw the quick growth in whiskey as an easy and fun way to make money.

It was likely, industry experts say, that a correction was in order as retailers and consumers, flush with inventory, slowed down their purchases and the market returned to normal after the pandemic buying spree.

Analysts also cite recent economic challenges related to President Trump’s tariffs. A backlash from Canadian consumers and provinces, which control alcohol sales, has virtually stopped the sale of American whiskey in what was once among the industry’s biggest export markets.

Overall, exports of American whiskey are down about 9 percent from 2024, according to the Distilled Spirits Council.

At the same time, the president’s unpredictable approach to tariff policy has made it difficult to expand into new markets, especially South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, three regions that major American whiskey distillers had once hoped to turn into reliable destinations for millions of bottles a year.

Consumer behavior has also changed rapidly in recent years as the first members of Gen Z reach drinking age.

Polls show that not only are young consumers drinking less, but they are trading up as well, choosing high-proof, more expensive bottles to drink sparingly. That is a big problem for Jim Beam, which relies heavily on its inexpensive, lower-proof White Label brand for sales.

“The data show that people don’t want 80 proof whiskey like Jim Beam White Label,” said Fred Minnick, a whiskey expert and the author of the forthcoming book “Bottom Shelf: How a Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life.” “What they continue to buy are elevated brands.”

That explains why, even as Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s pull back, companies like Sazerac, which makes luxury whiskeys like George T. Stagg and Pappy Van Winkle, continue to grow. In October, Sazerac announced a $1 billion expansion, primarily at its Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort, Ky.

Mr. Minnick added that in many ways, this was a story that Kentucky distillers have heard before.

By the mid-1960s, bourbon production was at a similar record high, fueled by the prolific alcohol consumption of the “Mad Men” era. But as baby boomers reached adulthood, they turned away from whiskey in favor of vodka and rum, or away from alcohol together.

The result was a decades-long stretch of oversupply and cratering demand, resulting in the closure of dozens of distilleries across the country.

Given the continued economic and cultural headwinds, the pause at Jim Beam is both a sign of how bad things have gotten for the industry and a harbinger of more shutdowns to come.

“It’s a sad day for bourbon, to be honest with you,” Mr. Minnick said. “For this to happen is a real punch in the gut.”
Click to expand...

blame it on legal marijuana… cell…
.
 
Interesting, almost seems like a Legal Ponzi Scheme...

Investors Warn of ‘Rot in Private Equity’ as Funds Strike Circular Deals​

Buyout firms have struggled to sell companies they own and have instead found a workaround to get cash back to clients: Selling the companies to themselves.

In May 2022, clients of the private equity firm Clearlake Capital gathered at a California resort with dazzling views of the Pacific Ocean, where champagne and shrimp flowed freely.

Perhaps even more dazzling than the setting at the Monarch Beach Resort & Club was Clearlake’s recent performance, which had blown through almost every imaginable benchmark, with one fund generating average annual returns of 50 percent.

One reason for the firm’s success, according to one attendee and documents shared at the gathering: Clearlake was selling the companies it owned from one set of investment funds to another set of funds it also managed called “continuation vehicles.”

Continuation funds are meant as a temporary fix for a serious problem that has been bedeviling firms like Clearlake.

Private equity firms have been struggling to deliver on their core business model of taking on debt, buying companies and selling them for a profit. Several years of high interest rates have made it too expensive for many would-be buyers to purchase companies with debt, and private equity firms are contending with a backlog of more than 31,000 unsold companies, a record amount. Deal activity picked up toward the end of this year, but not enough to make a significant dent in the backlog.

Continuation vehicles are providing a short-term solution by allowing firms to sell the companies to themselves, book a paper gain and wait for interest rates to improve.

Private equity firms have been turning to this strategy more frequently. The dollar value of continuation vehicles across the industry is expected to total $100 billion or more by the end of 2025, up from about $35 billion in 2019, according to the investment bank Evercore.

Private equity is one of the biggest parts of the global economy, with more than $7 trillion in investors’ money, and some of those investors are getting increasingly worried that strategies like continuation vehicles are putting off a painful reckoning.

Private equity firms say they are selling only their best-performing companies to continuation vehicles, which would yield big profits when the companies can eventually be sold to outside buyers.

The risk, investors say, is that the insular nature of these sales — where the private equity firm is both the buyer and seller — is leading to questionable valuations and unrealistic projections, leaving investors vulnerable to painful surprises.

At the gathering of pension managers and other Clearlake clients at the Monarch Hotel in 2022, the firm boasted about the success of Wheel Pros, an auto accessories retailer that it had sold to one of its continuation funds.

The company sells flashy hubcaps and other accessories for wheels, which were popular during the pandemic when consumers were flush with stimulus money and had time for do-it-yourself projects.

Two years after that gathering, in September 2024, Wheel Pros declared bankruptcy, because sales slowed after the pandemic. The company couldn’t keep up with its ballooning debt payments. Every investor, including public employees’ pension funds from New York, Connecticut and Nevada, was wiped out. (Connecticut and Nevada had previously sold out of some of their Wheel Pros stake.)

Clearlake Capital declined to make their executives available for an interview. In a 2023 podcast interview, José E. Feliciano, a founder of the firm, said it used continuation vehicles for “companies that were A-plus assets that we wouldn’t mind owning for a long time, maybe forever.” He added that it was also for companies that would need more time and investment to realize their full potential.

Platinum Equity, another firm, has struggled with its investment in United Site Services, which makes portable toilets. In 2021, Platinum Equity executives described the sale of United Site Services to a continuation fund it created as a “win-win.” Now, United Site Services is in the process of turning the company over to its lenders, and its investors are expected to lose all their money.

“Continuation vehicles are indicative of rot in private equity,’’ said Marcus Frampton, chief investment officer of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, which manages $83 billion of the state’s money that is derived from oil revenues and distributed annually to Alaskans.

The increased use of these funds, he said, is one of the reasons the Alaska fund has scaled back investments with private equity firms. Mr. Frampton said the firms were shirking their purpose to create value through buying and selling companies. In 2021, the Alaska fund held 22 percent of its dollars in private equity firms. Now it holds about 17 percent.

Scott Ramsower, who oversees the private equity investments of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a pension fund that manages roughly $229 billion, said there were inherent conflicts in continuation funds because a private equity firm is typically involved on both sides of the deal.

“We’d be happier if a private equity firm never did any of these,” Mr. Ramsower said about continuation funds.

The private equity industry says there are no conflicts because the deals are independently vetted. First, a private equity firm’s largest investors must consent to selling a portfolio company to a continuation vehicle. Then, existing and new investors have a chance to scrutinize the company’s financials and decide whether to buy into a deal at a specific price tag. If the investors don’t see the upside for future returns for a specific company when it is finally sold to an outside buyer, the deal won’t move forward.

But some investors say this vetting process is not always transparent.

This month, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery claiming that Energy & Minerals Group, a private equity firm, was seeking to “reap a massive benefit for themselves” at the expense of their investors by selling a company into a continuation vehicle.

According to the lawsuit, the firm tried to force the sovereign wealth funds and other investors to vote on the sale on short notice, provided different data to different investors and would not allow the investors to confer with each other about the deal.

Energy & Minerals Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Nigel Dawn, global head of private capital advisory at Evercore, said that so far continuation fund bankruptcies were below the rates of traditional buyout funds, which hover between 5 and 10 percent.

But he said it was far too soon to say what returns will ultimately look like more broadly for these funds. “It’s still the early days,” he said.

Clearlake is one of the most frequent users of continuation funds, creating six of them since 2020.

Clearlake, which was founded by Mr. Feliciano and Behdad Eghbali, both billionaires, in 2006 and initially managed $182 million. Now they manage roughly $90 billion of investor money and recently said they would double that amount by buying another fund.

Clearlake bought Wheel Pros for about $420 million in 2018. As its new owners, Clearlake wanted to go big, pushing executives to buy up almost every competitor that made accessories for the wheels of cars and trucks, according to two people familiar with the firm’s thinking. By 2021, profits had jumped to over $200 million from about $50 million in 2018.

Even though the I.P.O. market was strong in 2021, private equity firms often have to wait a few years after a company goes public to collect all their gains. Clearlake figured it could book an even bigger and immediate gain by putting Wheel Pros into a continuation vehicle that valued the business at $2.3 billion, more than four times the price Clearlake had paid just three years earlier, the two people said. As is typical in continuation funds, Clearlake gave its existing investors the chance to either cash out or roll their investment into the new fund.

Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System was among the sellers, while state pensions for Connecticut and Nevada rolled some of their commitment into the new fund and New York rolled all of it.

Clearlake also brought in a new batch of investors, including other large private equity firms like Blackstone, Pantheon and ICG.

Wheel Pros’ senior managers took their own stock options — worth about $100 million — and put them into the new fund, the people said. Clearlake invested about $50 million of its partners’ profits, too, said another person familiar with the matter.

Once Clearlake moved Wheel Pros into the continuation vehicle and booked a profit, it added substantially more debt to the company, ratcheting up the financial pressure, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times. The move came not long before the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates. Wheel Pros had some debt with an interest rate tied to government bond yields, and that also increased the company’s debt costs.

By 2023, Wheel Pros’ sales were weakening as the pandemic-era boost dissipated. The next year, the company could no longer make its interest payments and filed for bankruptcy.

Clearlake’s continuation vehicles, known as Icon Partners I and II, reported strong annual returns of 49 percent and 56 percent on average through March 2025 since they were created in 2020 and 2021.

But Icon Partners III, which held Wheel Pros, was a total loss, and Icon Partners IV and V reported annualized returns of 2.7 percent and 10.1 percent from their creation in 2021 through the end of March.

Clearlake hasn’t yet sold or taken public any of the companies in the continuation funds, making a true measure of returns difficult to discern.

“Private equity walks so much in the shadows,” said Yaron Nili, a professor of corporate law at Duke Law School who wrote a paper recently on continuation funds.

Because so many deals involve private equity firms buying from each other or from themselves, “it will be hard to distinguish between value-generating activities and just collecting and recollecting fees,’’ Mr. Nili said.

Some firms are pushing out the sales timeline even further. This year, private equity firms including Accel-KKR have started selling their companies from one continuation vehicle to another.

The industry calls these new funds “CV-squared.”
 
The risk, investors say, is that the insular nature of these sales — where the private equity firm is both the buyer and seller — is leading to questionable valuations and unrealistic projections, leaving investors vulnerable to painful surprises.

“Private equity walks so much in the shadows,” said Yaron Nili, a professor of corporate law at Duke Law School who wrote a paper recently on continuation funds.

Because so many deals involve private equity firms buying from each other or from themselves, “it will be hard to distinguish between value-generating activities and just collecting and recollecting fees,’’ Mr. Nili said.


Interest rates were too high for the debt taken on. If interest rates come down, this will pick up again.
 
Interesting read, looking forward to new Geico Neanderthal Ads...

The Year in Neanderthals​

They drew with crayons, possibly fed on maggots and maybe even kissed us: Forty millenniums later, our ancient human cousins continued to make news.

Neanderthals, who flourished across Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years before vanishing around 40,000 years ago, had a notable return to the scientific spotlight in 2025.

More than a dozen high-profile scientific studies explored all sorts of aspects of their existence, from their love lives (they probably kissed Homo sapiens) to potential flaws in their red blood cells that may have hastened their decline.

Barely three decades ago, these ancient hominids were still being widely depicted as knuckle-dragging brutes that were too dimwitted for moral or religious concepts, probably lacking language and behaviorally less advanced than modern humans. The picture changed considerably in 2010 after the Max Planck Institute published the complete Neanderthal genome, which revealed that people of European or Asian descent possess as much as 4 percent Neanderthal DNA, indicating extensive, past interbreeding between the two hominid groups.

Joao Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Lisbon, noted, with a trace of sarcasm, that the push to classify Neanderthals as a separate species frequently arises from a reluctance, especially among geneticists, to fully accept them as a geographically distinct, but interbreeding, branch of humanity.

“There are lots and lots of geneticists, many more than there are archaeologists,” he said. “Doing research on this or that molecule is much less time-intensive than excavating an archaeological site and studying what was found there.”

Since the mid-1990s, Dr. Zilhão has argued that there was no significant cognitive or cultural gap between Neanderthals and modern humans. His fieldwork in Spain indicates that Neanderthals independently fashioned cave art and jewelry, such as decorated seashells, between 65,000 and 115,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before similar finds linked to Homo sapiens in Africa or their arrival in Europe. Dr. Zilhão proposes that the shared capacity for symbolic thought points to a history of gene flow and cultural diffusion between the two groups, rather than Homo sapiens being uniquely sophisticated.

The Times asked Dr. Zilhão to share his perspective on the year’s most newsworthy Neanderthal-related projects.

The parent trap​

In 1931, archaeologists discovered the 140,000-year-old skeletal remains of a child, most likely a girl between the ages of 3 and 5, at the Skhul Cave on Mount Carmel in Israel. A new study in the journal L’Anthropologie found that the child may have been a hybrid, with one parent a Homo sapiens and the other Neanderthal. This would push back the date for when these groups mixed by some 90,000 years and indicate that they interacted earlier and more deeply than thought.

Under the direction of Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University and Anne Dambricourt-Malassé of the French National Center for Scientific Research, paleoanthropologists digitally reconstructed the skull and jaw of the child using CT scans and 3-D mapping technology. Comparing these models with those of other Neanderthal and early Homo sapiens children, they discovered a compelling fusion of features: The part of the skull housing the brain resembled that of a modern human, while the jaw and inner ear structures were similar to those found in Neanderthals. The findings suggest that the unique combination of traits points to a long-term intermingling in the Middle East, not just isolated encounters.

This evidence challenges the notion that Neanderthals were rapidly replaced by modern humans, and that human evolution was solely defined by conflict. Instead, the two hominid groups appear to have been intimately connected, such that local Neanderthal populations were gradually absorbed into larger Homo sapiens groups, Dr. Hershkovitz argues. This supports the paleodeme theory, which views both groups as part of one fluid evolutionary lineage.

Dr. Hershkovitz contends that lumping all early humans into one species group hides important details about why some traits stuck around while others vanished, and why mixed individuals, like the Skhul hybrid, appeared when they did. Sticking to a single-species model might seem less complicated, he added, but it risks simplifying the fossil record too much, losing the real story of evolution, and making it harder to understand how different human groups interacted and changed over time.

Despite the physical evidence, the classification of the Skhul child remains contentious. To Dr. Zilhão, the extent of interbreeding suggests that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens should be considered one species. Dr. Hershkovitz, however, contends that persistent physical differences between the groups, spanning time and geography, justify having separate categories. While both experts agree that DNA analysis could clarify the child’s genealogy, Dr. Zilhão noted that the fossil’s age and location make recovering such data unlikely.

A truer Paleo diet​

Neanderthals were far from simple scavengers, several findings this year revealed.

A study in Quaternary Science Reviews detailed how Neanderthals in modern-day Serbia were elite hunters, executing daring, commando-style ambushes and dramatic cliff drives to corner wild goats in treacherous terrain. Fifty thousand to 70,000 years ago, in what is now Israel, neighboring Neanderthal groups practiced distinct, culturally transmitted methods for butchering animals, according to research published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. And in a paper in Science Advances, scientists working a site in Germany found that Neanderthals were extracting marrow fat from bones 125,000 years ago, long before early Homo sapiens were doing anything similar.

“Of course they did,” Dr. Zilhão said. “Why not?”

The Neanderthal diet was long thought to have been heavy on large game, a conclusion drawn from analyzing nitrogen isotopes in their bone collagen. But a study published in Science Advances suggests that the same data could also point to a more varied, omnivorous diet that included insects.

Melanie Beasley, who is a biological anthropologist at Purdue University in Indiana and the study’s lead author, proposed that maggots, which convert lean protein into fat, offered a nutrition-rich, abundant, easily procurable food source when times were tough. She likened munching on fly larvae to eating candy corn (and advised against dwelling on the comparison).

Dr. Zilhão said that Neanderthals were likely to have had a flexible diet and adapted their eating habits to the food options found throughout their extensive range, which stretched from Gibraltar to Siberia. The notion of Neanderthals as exclusively hyper-carnivores, he added, was “a dumb, nonsensical proposition.”

The brightest crayon​

Archaeologists, led by Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France, analyzed 16 ocher fragments found across Neanderthal sites in Crimea and mainland Ukraine, dating as far back as 100,000 years ago. The study, detailed in Science Advances, highlighted three items that showed clear evidence of having been intentionally shaped and used for drawing. One remarkable discovery was a two-inch yellow “crayon” from roughly 42,000 years ago, which microscopic analysis showed had been repeatedly sharpened, indicating that it was likely a valued tool. The implement had clearly been modified through grinding and scraping.

Dr. d’Errico argued that the crayon must be attributed to Neanderthals rather than modern humans: It was found in a site known to have been occupied by Neanderthals, and preceded the era when Homo sapiens were widely accepted to have arrived in that area. Researchers called the artifact a crayon, he said, based on its function and specific wear patterns, which strongly confirmed its use for marking a surface, possibly skin or rock. Tiny signs of friction and applied pressure, not just the object’s shape alone, suggested it had been used as an artistic tool.

“Further proof that Neanderthals engaged in the symbolic use of colorants,” said Dr. Zilhão, who has frequently collaborated with Dr. d’Errico.

Kissing cousins​

The genetic and physiological evidence indicate that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred. Now, research led by Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, suggests that these encounters also likely involved kissing.

The study, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, found that both groups shared specific oral bacteria that diverged long after their evolutionary split, indicating what Dr. Brindle called ”prolonged engagement and saliva swapping.”

She and her colleagues maintain that smooching is not a contemporary cultural development but a deeply rooted primate trait that originated between 21.5 million and 16.9 million years ago. The researchers began by examining the ritual across different ape species. They defined the act prosaically, if not clinically, as “nonaggressive, mouth-to-mouth contact” independent of feeding. “Unfortunately, there are no fossils of gorillas locking lips,” Dr. Brindle said.

The team observed platonic kissing (for affection and reconciliation) in chimpanzees and orangutans and sexual kissing (for arousal) in bonobos. “We watched loads of video footage of apes having a snog,” Dr. Brindle said. “There was quite a lot about bonobo tonguing going on, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.”

The team then used Bayesian modeling to reconstruct the evolutionary history of kissing. Their hypothesis: Despite the potential risk of spreading pathogens, kissing endured as an evolutionary advantage because it enabled individuals to strengthen social ties and subconsciously assess a potential partner’s health. “We’ve all been there,” Dr. Brindle said. “You kiss someone and suddenly realize, ‘Oh, actually, this isn’t going to work.’ It’s a try-before-you-buy situation.”

Canoodling between hominids shouldn’t come as a shock, Dr. Zilhão said, given how widespread the behavior is across species. “Monkeys do it, giraffes do it, polar bears do it and — surprise, surprise — Neanderthals did it, too. Amazing. Who would have thought?”
 

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