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The PE CxO Report for March '26: Show Me The Proof

  • Writer: Scott Engler
    Scott Engler
  • Apr 29
  • 6 min read

6,029 subscribers

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Building Synced Teams That Deliver

April 9, 2026

It's harder to get money, harder to make money and harder to sell. The market is getting more selective and more operational. 

That means real value creation is getting defined more narrowly, leadership quality matters earlier, and liquidity solutions are getting more creative because clean exits are few. 

From the buyer side, they are digging deeper, pushing faster, and spending more time validating what’s already working inside a business. There’s less tolerance for gaps, less reliance on future upside, and huge focus on what can be proven in diligence.

What carries weight now is performance that shows up clearly in the numbers, holds together under pressure, and can be explained without a long narrative.

For CEOs and CFOs, the takeaway is straightforward. The job is not to tell a better story. It’s to improve the business AND make the business easier to understand, easier to measure, and easier for the next buyer to underwrite with confidence. 

Curated Articles from March:


  • The Market Just Reset the Bar — McKinsey Global Private Markets Report

  • 6 Strategies for Successful Exits — McKinsey

  • 10 Ways PE CEOs Win — McKinsey

  • Secondaries Are Becoming the Default Liquidity Tool — Private Equity International

  • Capital Is Concentrating in Fewer, Bigger Winners — Reuters

  • AI Is Moving from Narrative to Measurable Impact — FTI Consulting

  • AI Is Reshaping How Decisions Get Made — FinTech Weekly



The Market Just Reset the Bar — McKinsey Global Private Markets Report

McKinsey's Feb reporting reinforces the themes we've been talking about for months. Entry multiples remain elevated, and capital is still competing for a limited set of high-quality assets. Holding periods are extending and distributions remain under pressure. That combination changes how value creation is defined. It is less about identifying upside and more about executing against a focused set of improvements that show up clearly in results. The firms that are outperforming are translating their investment thesis into operating performance earlier and with more consistency.

What matters now:


  • Operational execution is carrying more of the return

  • High entry prices increase the need for precision

  • Holding periods are extending

  • LP expectations are shifting toward realized outcomes

  • Scale and specialization are separating firms


6 Strategies for Successful Exits — McKinsey

McKinsey highlighted 6 strategies for successful exits:


  1. Embed exit plans into the acquisition process. This ensures the investment is built with a clear path to realization from day one.

  2. Establish rigorous exit governance and planning. This creates structure, accountability, and ongoing visibility into exit readiness.

  3. Map the universe of potential buyers. This expands optionality and ensures the asset is positioned for the right set of acquirers.

  4. Develop a value-creation plan tied to the thesis and leave room for the next buyer. This makes the story both credible and transferable.

  5. Launch value-capture sprints in the final stages of ownership. This sharpens performance and reinforces buyer confidence at the right moment.

  6. Highlight AI readiness and potential. This demonstrates that the business is positioned for future relevance and defensible growth.



10 Ways PE CEOs Win — McKinsey

Private equity CEOs outperform because they operate with intensity, discipline, and an investor mindset. They are not short-term optimizers—they build long-term, value-creating businesses, but with compressed timelines and higher accountability. Their edge comes from ruthless prioritization, clarity on value drivers, and tight alignment across talent, strategy, governance, and culture. Here are the 10 ways CEOs win:


  1. Talent is the Primary Lever — Build and continuously upgrade a leadership team that can execute the value creation plan now and at exit.

  2. Profit Over Growth (Kill Bad Revenue) — Prioritize profitable growth by identifying and eliminating revenue that destroys margin and capacity.

  3. Operate with an Investor Lens (Full-Potential Diligence) — Constantly evaluate the business like an investor to identify gaps, risks, and upside opportunities.

  4. Clean-Sheet the Organization — Redesign functions from the ground up to maximize efficiency, productivity, and performance.

  5. Governance as a Value Creation Tool — Use the board as an active partner to drive alignment, speed, and better decision-making.

  6. Time is Capital — Allocate time intentionally toward high-value activities like strategy, customers, and critical decisions.

  7. Operate Under Extreme Pressure — Deliver outsized results quickly despite constraints, high expectations, and constant scrutiny.

  8. Long-Term Mindset, Short-Term Execution — Build a durable business while executing with urgency against near-term milestones.

  9. Culture is Focused and Pragmatic — Shape culture around performance and accountability tied directly to the value creation plan.

  10. Leadership Traits that Matter — Win through ambition, learning agility, self-awareness, and strong stakeholder management.


Secondaries Are Becoming the Default Liquidity Tool — Private Equity International

Liquidity is being managed more actively. With traditional exits still uneven, continuation vehicles and GP-led secondaries are being used more frequently to extend ownership of strong assets while returning capital to investors. This changes expectations for operators. Ownership timelines are less predictable, and strong assets may remain under the same sponsor for longer.

What matters now:


  • Secondaries are part of the core strategy

  • Strong assets are being held longer

  • Liquidity is being engineered

  • Continuation vehicles are more common

  • Exit planning includes multiple paths


Capital Is Concentrating in Fewer, Bigger Winners — Reuters

Fundraising continues to favor scale and track record. Larger, established firms are still able to raise significant capital, while others face a more selective environment. This is concentrating capital among a smaller group of firms and raising expectations across their portfolios. The gap between scaled platforms and the rest of the market is widening.

What matters now:


  • Scale and track record matter more

  • Capital is concentrating at the top

  • LPs are becoming more selective

  • Differentiation is more important for mid-market firms

  • Expectations rise with capital strength


AI Is Moving From Narrative to Measurable Impact — FTI Consulting

AI is creating real performance. Most firms are seeing some results, and in many cases AI is outperforming expectations—BUT adoption is still shallow. 

Only a small percentage of companies have moved beyond pilots to true enterprise-scale deployment. The biggest shift is where value is coming from: AI is no longer just a cost lever. It’s driving revenue growth, improving underwriting, and shaping exit readiness.

The constraint isn’t technology—it’s execution. 

Talent, operating cadence, and leadership alignment are the limiting factors. Firms know what to do, but most aren’t built to scale it across fragmented portfolios. 

AI Is Reshaping How Decisions Get Made — FinTech Weekly

Firms are embedding small, high-signal data teams directly into operations. These teams surface granular insights on pricing, demand, and cost in real time, allowing companies to act faster and with more precision. The result is tighter execution: better pricing discipline, improved forecasting, and more consistent margin capture.

The real shift is deeper. AI is changing the operating model itself—moving firms from judgment-based decision-making to signal-driven execution. 

Insight no longer comes from debate; it arrives as quantified recommendations that reshape how leaders act. That forces a redesign of governance: who owns decisions, when to override AI, and how performance feeds back into the system. 

Firms that treat AI as a tool will get incremental gains. Those that rebuild their operating model around it will create durable advantage—and show buyers a more resilient, scalable business at exit.

March Summary

Performance needs to be visible. Execution needs to be repeatable. And the story needs to hold up without explanation. For CEOs and CFOs, that changes how you run the business. Fewer priorities. Clearer metrics. Faster decisions. Stronger alignment between operations and outcomes. 

That’s also where we’re seeing the biggest gap in practice. Most teams understand what needs to happen, but lack a single system that connects diligence, value creation, execution visibility, and exit readiness. We’ve been building a cradle-to-grave diagnostic to close that gap—linking those elements into one operating framework. It’s already in use across portfolio companies, with broader rollout underway. 

Contact scott@sync-exec.com to learn more.

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