An LBO Bombshell, McMahon on Wire, Kamala’s Media Blitz

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon compendium of Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, Bill Cohan digs into the monster LBO deal that has Wall Street aflutter—especially as the ~$6 trillion private equity industry grapples with the higher cost of capital, shrinking returns, more complex deals, and fewer exits. Is private credit the answer?

Plus, below the fold: Dylan Byers charts the aftershocks inside CBS News as C.E.O. Wendy McMahon prepares to meet with her new Paramount bosses. Rachel Strugatz evaluates whether Glossier’s fragrance strategy will finally get Emily Weiss her long-awaited exit. John Heilemann rings up political media power couple Peter Baker and Susan Glasser to diagnose the G.O.P.’s split-personality syndrome. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and Romney’s former strategist Stuart Stevens scrutinize Kamala Harris’s homestretch media blitz. And on The Powers That Be, Eriq Gardner joins Peter Hamby to dissect the juicy legal spat over the un-cancellation of A&E’s former cash cow Live PD.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Once upon a time, the LBO business was the most innovative and disruptive—and, honestly, sexy—part of Wall Street, planting the seed for the ~$6 trillion private equity market. But now that P.E. is pivoting to private credit, a new set of tools are being unleashed, and a new generation of winners and losers will be minted.

DYLAN BYERS

The nightmare on 57th Street continues as CBS News chief Wendy McMahon preps for a meeting with incoming Paramount leaders David Ellison and Jeff Shell amid a series of ongoing scandals and micro-scandals that have the newsroom and media chattering class in an uproar.

RACHEL STRUGATZ

Rêve and Doux, the company’s new fragrances, had a buoyant debut. But will they offer the sort of sustained success required to create a scent portfolio and offer Emily Weiss (and Kirsten Green… and Josh Kushner…) that long-awaited exit?

JOHN HEILEMANN

Pre-gaming the nerve-wracking, existentially terrifying, down-to-the-wire Trump vs. Harris showdown on November 5 with The New York Times’s Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser.