Carlyle to Acquire Healthcare Revenue Cycle AI Firm

The Economic Times reported:

Private equity (PE) fund Carlyle Group has signed an agreement to acquire a significant majority stake in Knack Global, a Florida-based revenue cycle management (RCM) solutions provider, at a valuation of around $500 million, people aware of the deal told ET.

Knack's current PEU (private equity underwriter) owner is LKCM Headwater Investment.  I assume Carlyle's stake will displace some or all of LKCM's.  

Knack Global's website states:

Through an innovative, tech enabled approach to revenue cycle service delivery and practice support services, Knack RCM offers healthcare providers a customized approach to achieving financial freedom. Knack optimizes workflows through AI-driven automation, a deep bench of scalable global talent, and customizable end-to-end or standalone services, creating efficiencies that drive profitability.

Flashback to Columbia/HCA when Rick Scott was CEO.  His aggressive approach to overbilling government payers cost HCA $1.7 billion in federal settlements.  I'm sure Scott would love to have blamed any "discrepancies" on AI algorithms.  Scott is now the senior U.S. Senator representing Florida and the former governor.

Knack Global has grown through a series of rollup acquisitions, a common PEU strategy.  

March 2025 - bought PPM Partners

January 2025 - purchased HealthyBOS

August 2024 - acquired Merrick Management

The Carlyle Group currently has 49 healthcare affiliates. It recently announced an investment in Ingentis, a Human Resources AI firm.

Carlyle selects firms with hot growth potential and high profitability for investment.  It also cross sells affiliate services within its PEU family.  I imagine Knack and Ingentis will do that and more for Carlyle.  

Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren.  Increasingly more are one.

AI Social Media Toxic, Like TechGod Creators

Business Insider reported researchers gave AI bots their own social media site and it turned toxic under three different AI models, OpenAI, Llama and Deepseek.

Over the course of five separate experiments — each running over 10,000 actions — the bots were free to post, follow, and repost. What happened looked a lot like real-world social media.

Toxic, divisive, drivel, populated by nonsense.

Congress failed to protect citizens (especially children) from the widespread harms of social media and is protecting toxic AI via the just-passed Big Beautiful Bill (shirk & jerk) which provides a ten year federal moratorium on states regulating AI.

Just in time for child grooming AI.

Elected officials did not protect the children then and are not going to protect your ability to earn a livelihood.  

Business Insider ran a piece on the elimination of gobs of white collar jobs due to AI

TechGods have a plan to f...k humanity, over (social media) and over (fintech) and over (crypto) and over (AI - rapid inference) and over (non-confidential ChatGPT therapy?) and over (AI can secretly conspire).  

Those with knowledge would do well to stay away from all things Altman (OpenAI, WorldCoin, WorldID, Hydrazine Capital, Soylent, Valuebase, Starsky Robotics, Verbling, Oyster, Patreon. BuildZoom, Flexport, Zenefits, Y Combinator, Merge Labs, Apollo Projects, Reddit, Neuralink, Coalition, Asana, Wave Mobile Money, Hermeus, Rescale, Meter, Alt, Oklo, Apex and Humane.)

It's all usurpable, you, your job and your children.   The sad part is they do it with glee.

When Private Credit Becomes Private Equity

Fashion Network reported:

Carlyle, which is the biggest lender to Very Group's parent company, could assume ownership of the retailer as soon as October under the terms of its financing arrangements, a Sky News report claimed.

Sources said Carlyle is expected to talk with fellow creditors including IMI (the Abu Dhabi-based vehicle which assumed part of Very Group's debts) in the weeks ahead. 

It means Carlyle is likely to end up with a majority stake in Very Group once it exercises a 'step-in right’, which converts its debt into equity ownership, the sources said.

My wise friend wrote:

Which just goes to show you the debt holders are the true equity owners. The equity owns a black hole. How many holes are out there?

Great question.  Valuations seem rather whimsical, but that likely is needed to make the debt seem reasonable, which it is, until it is not.

This isn't Carlyle's first backdoor rodeo roping of a storied family owned firm.   Carlyle used the credit chute to lasso Brintons', a distinguished family owned carpet company in the United Kingdom.

The Telegraph reported:  

Rather than buying the family's equity stake, Carlyle bought the company's debt (at a discount to its face value, no doubt). Once they had acquired the debt Carlyle then used a controversial pre-pack administration to seize control – placing the carpet-maker into administration, then buying it straight back. 

The descendants of the founding Brinton family accused Carlyle of breaking a string of promises to gain control. 

By using a pre-pack to acquire the business, Carlyle was able to jettison Brintons' pension fund – complete with its £10.5m deficit...    '

The Pension Protection Fund has been left to pick up the pieces and will almost certainly end up taking over the 1,500-member scheme.

Very Group has a pension.  I can't imagine Carlyle keeping that (unless it has ample cash and the PEU can redirect investments to Carlyle offerings).  

The Barclay family is in good company with the Brintons.   They should share their experiences with 401(k) holders considering private equity/private credit investments. 

I wonder how much Very Group 401(k) holders will put into private credit/private equity.  If their experience is anything like Brintons, that bad PEU ownership taste could linger for some time.

Trump's Bump Stock "Rothman Gun" Loaded

My wise friend wrote: 

So now Donald Trump is going after Goldman's economist because the market's hitting highs and the economist had some hesitations regarding Trump's policies on the economy. I remember Marvin Rothman from Janney Montgomery who put out a sell on DJT hotels in Atlantic City because of all the mismanagement. The poor guy got fired. I think he ended up having cancer from all the pressures DJT gave him and in the end the guy was right. That's how Donald plays when he's wrong. That's why you can only have YES-men around him. 

Spineless, soulless enablers who compliment without ceasing.... 

Marvin Rothman won his wrongful termination case, just one of the countless wrongful things Trump has done during his lifetime.

Flashback to November 2002.  StocksandNews.com reported:

Marvin Rothman was the first analyst to take on the system while working for Janney Montgomery (a Philadelphia-based firm), when he issued a highly negative report on Donald Trump’s casino holdings. Trump was furious, but Rothman was right. Marvin then suffered the consequences, which I need to leave at that. But from time to time, it’s important to acknowledge those who had the integrity to do the right thing.

Law.com did a story on Rothman's lawyer, Martin Sobol.  It states: 

For a lawyer who has made a career of representing management in labor matters, Sobol's most recognizable client might come from a case where he represented a plaintiff, stock analyst Marvin Rothman. The 1993 case revolved around Rothman being fired from Janney Montgomery Scott after offering a negative opinion about the future of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Rothman sued for wrongful termination, and Sobol argued his case successfully in court.

My wise friend followed up with:

If there was ever an analog to the Scorpion/Frog stream fable, DJT is the come to life movie version. People don't want to see it because Trump gives everyone a little bit of his transactional plums. He knows you better than you know yourself. He epitomizes the degradation of values in the overused rationalization of: "Don't take it personal, It's business."

Overcoming wrongs and the wronged to appease the deal (like taking money and protecting people in the Epstein files), as well as using the power of the pardon like a vending machine with a gold card. Tokenization. His history is well known for all to see, similar to the bodies laid out on the Appian Way into Rome.

But everyone in D.C. refuses to recognize the stench. Both parties are complicit and feed at the hand of the Oligarchy Transactional! Trump will bury the truth tellers like Gresham's law drives out good money in a sea of bad money. 

The ROTHMAN's will be afraid to come OUT even though he was 100 percent correct as DJT BLED THAT casino down to zero. Snake eyes!

Courts can't work fast enough for those harmed by Trump II, the digital Caligula.  But they should try. 

Taylor Swift Finally Beat Private Equity

Taylor Swift relived The Carlyle Group's partnering with Scooter Braun in 2019 to buy out master recordings of her first six albums.  Billboard reported:

She had been vocal about her devastation with the initial sale of her masters to Scooter Braun in 2019 — which she said “ripped my heart out of my chest”

Carlyle then sold Swift's music to Shamrock Holdings, instead of selling them to their creator.

"Since I was a teenager, I’ve been saving up money to buy my music back,” she recalled on the podcast as the tight end rubbed her hand affectionately. “I thought about not owning my music every day … It was like an intrusive thought.” 

 According to Swift, it wasn’t members of her team who negotiated the deal with Shamrock — it was her mom, Andrea, and her brother, Austin.

In December 2019 Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein told Fox News:

"In that particular case, I do think there'll be a resolution of that in the near future," Rubenstein said. "Hopefully, [Swift] can continue to do very good music, but it's something that is more complicated than my being able to resolve it right here."

Complicated by greed.  Rubenstein never made good on his commitment.  Swift created a song in honor of the PEU boys titled "The Man."

I'm sure Taylor Swift is not the first person to collapse in their significant other's arms after being freed from the vise of private equity.  But I am happy for her.

Trump II PEU

Treasury Chief Scott Bessent told Fox Business News' Larry Kudlow:

(other countries) will invest in companies and industries that we direct them, largely at the President's discretion.....other countries are providing us with a sovereign wealth fund.... these huge surpluses accumulated offshore.. they will be reinvesting back into the U.S. economy and we will be able to direct them as we re-shore these critical industries.

Yes, the public saw how Trump II, the digital Caligula, got a "free" UAE luxury jet and directed it go with him when he leaves office. That's a U.S. military asset Trump is appropriating for his future use as a "citizen".

I've never heard a Treasury Secretary speak so imprecisely.  These huge surpluses are what?  Trade imbalances, a budgeted amount agreed by another country's equivalent of Congress, crypto funny money accumulated by international criminal organizations?  

And how does Trump II get to decide how the money is directed/spent?  Congress has the power of the purse, even for new revenue stream items.  

Trump will be the head of America's foreign funded sovereign wealth fund, the government equivalent of a private equity underwriter (PEU).  He will direct how those hundreds of billions are invested.  Does he get equity stakes, deal fees or management fees?   How much of that walks out the door when Trump exits office?

Smithsonian Needs Epstein Exhibit

Trump II, the digital Caligula, continued his battle with Carlyle Group co-founder and Declaration Partners founder David Rubenstein.  Trump replaced Rubenstein as Chair of The Kennedy Center.  Rubenstein is a former regent of The Smithsonian and supporter of current Chancellor Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.  

Trump has asked the Smithsonian to offer "unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions" of events at various displays.  That is odd given Trump's divisive, destructive and historically unanchored persona.  

Mr. Rubenstein may wish to fund an Epstein exhibit replete with documents from Trump's Epstein collection at the "Just Us" department.  

Trump II has been the only docent/curator of those files who promised to share them with the American public.  The Smithsonian would be the perfect place given the widespread bipartisan interest in the Epstein files (unifying).  As they were seized from Epstein's various estates they should be historically accurate.  And what's more constructive than giving the people what they want?

Rubenstein did not fund Jeffrey Epstein but a fellow private equity underwriter (PEU) did to the tune of $170 million (Apollo's Leon Black).

 

Both Trump (WLFI) and Rubenstein (Paxos) think people want crypto.  That's the subject of a future Smithsonian exhibit, possibly titled "Something from Nothing."  Hopefully, it will be next to the Epstein Hall of Horrors.

Update 8-13-25:  Trump announced this year's Kennedy Center Awards and that he would host the event himself.

Historically, honorees have been picked by a bipartisan committee. In a press conference announcing this year’s group, Trump said he was “about 98% involved” in the selection process and that he “turned down plenty” of candidates for being “too woke.”

Trump : 

(fired) the center’s previous chairman (David Rubenstein) and members of its board of trustees who, he said, “do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

Rubenstein knows about the Gilded Age, back in force for billionaire PEUs and their new TechGod/CryptoBro brethren.  

Trump knows about the Golden Arches Age with his love of fast food.   

U.S. Arts and Culture are back to the Dark, Dank Ages.  I'm still cheering for an Epstein exhibit and maybe the Trump/Kennedy Centers can offer new Jeffrey Epstein Awards.