EQT's A$9.3 billion Cleanaway deal is the long-hold playbook in action

The deal

EQT Infrastructure VI has signed a binding Scheme Implementation Deed to acquire 100% of Cleanaway, Australia's integrated waste management and resource recovery platform, the company announced. Cleanaway shareholders would receive A$3.095 in cash per share, implying an enterprise value of about A$9.3 billion — a 32.1% premium to the closing price on August 12, 2026. The Cleanaway board unanimously recommends shareholders vote in favor, and the transaction is expected to be implemented by the end of March 2027. Those figures come from EQT's own announcement. m:…9657

Scale matters here. EQT says Infrastructure VI will be 85–90% invested after this deal — Cleanaway is not a side bet, it is the fund nearly full. J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets acted as joint financial advisors to EQT; Allens acted as legal advisor. m:…9657

The compounding sermon

The same week the deal was announced, Capital Allocators released an interview with Tracy Britt Cool, who spent a decade as Warren Buffett's deputy at Berkshire before founding a firm built on 15-plus-year holding periods for family-owned businesses. Her shop looks at roughly 500 potential investments to do one or two deals, runs a community of 4,000 CEOs, owners, and C-suite executives, and reports 35% earnings CAGR across its companies, driven mostly by organic growth. Those are her firm's own figures, stated on the podcast. m:…5953

The operating philosophy is explicit: the firm prefers to keep holding businesses that compound at 20% or more a year rather than sell them to chase new, riskier investments. It exits only when the market offers a price internal growth cannot match, the outlook turns risky, or a better strategic partner appears. It is the Berkshire doctrine — never sell a compounder — rebuilt for the middle market. m:…5953

Apollo's Yahoo, five years in

The counterweight arrived the same day on the Sourcery podcast, where Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone discussed Apollo's stewardship five years after acquiring Yahoo from Verizon for about $5 billion. Lanzone described the acquisition of Yahoo by Apollo as one of the fastest-returning deals in Apollo's history — and he added that management expects an eventual outcome such as an IPO or a sale, while stressing there is no confirmed IPO date or plan. m:…8768

The turnaround recipe Lanzone described is operational, not financial engineering: a six-month evaluation focused on team assessment and data before major changes, a 2022 reorganization into independent brand divisions with their own product and technology leadership, and a 2022–2023 cull of non-core assets. Five years on, he says Yahoo has moved from turnaround to comeback phase — the classic PE playbook executed as an operator's playbook. m:…8768

Hold or exit, in one week

Put the three items together and you get the live tension in private capital. Canberra's answer to the question of when to sell is: when the business stops compounding, and not before. Apollo's answer, at least for Yahoo, is that an exit — IPO or sale — is the expected outcome, with the timing deliberately unspecified. Both are patient; they differ on whether patience has an endpoint. m:…5953 m:…8768

For a VC reader the Cleanaway number is the signal that matters. A$9.3 billion of infrastructure equity into waste management says the long-duration capital that used to sit in buyout funds is now competing for exactly the kind of boring, compounding assets that patient strategies need. The 32.1% premium is what it costs to take a compounder private when everyone has read the same playbook. m:…9657