Good morning, dealmakers. MK Flynn here with the Wire. It’s been a prolific and productive week for PE Hub reporter Obey Martin Manayiti (who can be reached at obey.m@peimedia.com). He’s written three exclusives in two days. Yesterday, Obey broke the news that Ara Partners bought Genera Energy, a maker of non-wood, agricultural pulp-and-molded-fiber products used for packaging. Today, he was the first to report on two more deals: Supply chain solutions. Red Arts Capital has acquired Coregistics, a packaging services provider. Obey caught up with RAC’s co-founders and managing partners Chad Strader and Nicholas Antoine to learn more about why the Chicago-based private equity firm is betting on servicing the supply chain. “There are a number of fragmented family businesses in the packaging space,” Strader said. “I would imagine over the next several years, we are going to have a pretty aggressive merger and acquisition strategy to accelerate their revenue growth.” For more, read Obey’s story. Medical devices. ICG has bought Seaway Plastics Engineering, a provider of injection-molded, engineered components and value-added services for the medical device, healthcare and specialty industrial sectors. (Note: There’s more news from London-listed ICG Enterprise, below.) Obey spoke with Uzair Dossani, managing director of ICG’s North American direct private equity group, and Kevin Gregory, the firm’s healthcare sector lead, about how the deal symbolizes ICG’s investment thesis. “When we came across Seaway, we knew we had found what we were looking for in a platform investment: a great management team, strong organic growth, blue-chip customer base with great retention, strong systems and demonstrated success with add-on M&A,” Dossani explained. For more, read Obey’s story. Secondaries. London’s ICG has collected more than $5 billion for the largest fund dedicated to GP-leds, according to Secondaries Investor, which broke the news. “The vehicle, Strategic Equity IV, is the largest pool of capital ever raised for such transactions and shows that investors of the likes of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System, New York City Employees’ Retirement System and Oklahoma State Regents For Higher Education reckon this is a strategy worth backing,” writes Adam Le. See Adam’s story. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. The number of capital calls made by private equity firms has dropped, according to data from Investec. Fund managers have increasingly been looking to subscription lines to simplify investments, reports Madeleine Farman, who joined Private Equity International as a senior reporter in May. For more, read Madeleine’s story. Operational Excellence. Time is almost up to nominate a best-in-class operator for Private Equity International’s Operational Excellence Awards 2022. The deadline is Friday, 24 June. Find details and the entry form here. That’s all for now. PE Hub’s Aaron Weitzman writes the Wire on Fridays, so I’ll see you next week. All the best, MK Read the full wire commentary on PE Hub ... | 