Good morning dealmakers, it’s Obey Martin Manayiti here with the US edition of the Wire from the New York newsroom.
We kick things off with fresh deal news. GI Partners has closed a majority investment in Otodata, a provider of remote monitoring and vehicle tracking technology.
Next, we’ll check back with some of the members of affiliate title Buyouts’ Women in PE 2020 to see how their careers are evolving and to learn what has changed so far in terms of representation of women in PE.
To finish, we look at how new rules proposed by US Small Business Administration (SBA) could potentially impact private equity deal cycles. To learn more, I spoke with John Prairie, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown. More on that below.
Remote monitoring
GI Partners has closed on a majority investment in Otodata, a provider of remote monitoring and vehicle tracking technology. Existing shareholders, including Renovo Capital and Otodata’s management team, will retain a minority stake in the company.
Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Montreal, Otodata provides remote monitoring hardware, software and applications that let distributors track tank levels remotely, with an installed base of more than 3.5 million monitored tanks across North America, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The company also operates Tag Tracking, a provider of vehicle tracking, theft prevention and stolen-vehicle recovery services through a proprietary communications network in Canada.
“We see strong tailwinds in IoT from artificial intelligence, automation, and digitization, and Otodata is well positioned to capture them,” said Jerry Stapp, managing director at GI Partners, in a statement.
Glacial progress
When affiliate title Buyouts launched its first list of Women in PE in 2020, studies found that women represented less than 20 percent of all staff, and only 12 percent of those were in senior roles. The list was meant to highlight the professionals most likely to change the face of the industry, and in many ways, capture private equity’s first generation of female leaders.
Reporter Rob Kotecki recently revisited the inaugural list to see how women are changing the face of PE. The good news, as Kotecki found out, is that these women are still thriving; the bad news is they’re still rarities.
A 2025 Columbia Business School Study found that out of 661 US private equity firms, only 5 percent were led by women, and roughly 350 firms have no women in senior roles.
From the 2020 class, when Buyouts spoke to Michelle Noon for the list, she had just founded Clearhaven Partners in 2019 to focus on software buyout opportunities in the lower mid-market. Today, she serves as founder and managing partner, and with their recent seventh anniversary, her team has managed to raise about $1 billion over two funds, and acquire sixteen companies, of which seven were add-on acquisitions.
As a software investor, AI has loomed large for Noon and her firm. “In 2022 through 2024, AI was all about experimentation, but in 2026, it’s about the application of AI to deliver real gains in productivity, revenue, cost and efficiencies,” she says.
Ashley Evans was a principal in Carlyle Group’s tech team and was investing out of the firm’s flagship fund, having joined back in 2006 as an associate. Since then, she’s left Carlyle to join Francisco Partners as a partner
The move grew out of her view of the market. “In 2022, volatility increased and with that came a real breakdown between what was fundamentally true about businesses and their valuations in the market,” Evans says. And in that context, she felt the need to be at a shop committed to specialization.
Two-sided coin
The US Small Business Administration (SBA) is proposing new rules that would significantly raise the size thresholds for businesses to qualify as “small”, and therefore eligible for federal contracts. If passed, the proposals will have a significant impact on PE deal making, especially for the mid to lower-mid market firms, according to John Prairie, a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown.
There are size standards used by the federal government to determine which contractors qualify as “small” for purposes of small business set aside government contracts. These standards are based on annual revenues or number of employees. For example, the proposal is to increase the engineering services size standard from the current $25 million to $252 million, life sciences from 1000 employees to 2800, IT services is currently $35 million and will rise to $531 million, among others. Below is an excerpt from my conversation with Prairie:
How is this going to affect PE deal cycle?
There is a phenomenon in federal contracting where some companies that are successful at winning small business contracts effectively get penalized for their success if revenue or employees get too high. As a result, there is pressure for these companies to sell, often to PE firms, as they no longer qualify as small. So, it’s a two-sided coin for PE investment. If the rules are finalized, those small companies that were unable to grow further because it would mean losing their contracts could be less incentivized to sell to PE. On the other hand, a new pool of companies that don’t currently have access to those contracts could become appealing opportunities for PE.
Can you give us an example of a sector that will likely benefit?
For smaller PE firms that are focusing on the aerospace and defense industries, for example, there is going to be some interesting strategic opportunities to come in and combine companies with complementary capabilities and put them together to still have a combined company that qualifies as small.
What are the potential disadvantages to PE investors?
SBA has what is called affiliation rules, which is basically that if two companies are under common ownership, their employees and receipts are combined for purposes of determining whether either of them qualifies as small. At some point, if a PE firm has too many portfolio companies, none of them will qualify as small.
That’s it from me this morning. Craig McGlashan will bring you the Europe edition of the Wire on Wednesday, while Rafael Canton will write Wednesday’s US Wire.
Cheers,
Obey