Our history

Portco News started as Value Add, a Privitas publication, in 2023. In 2025 it spun out from Privitas to become a standalone publication, led by its editor-in-chief Isabel O’Brien.

Portco News is the only media outlet that focuses specifically on the operational side of private equity (“PE”). While most PE-focused publications scramble to report the latest fundraising close or deal landed, Portco News asks (and investigates) the question: what happens to a company after it is acquired by a PE firm?

This question isn’t just pertinent to the average PE operating partner or portfolio company (“portco”) executive — it’s crucial reading for 12 million-plus Americans currently employed at a PE portco.

Thus, Portco News aims to bring insights to every rung of readership up the PE portco ladder… from owners to operators to employees.

Leadership

Isabel O’Brien is the editor-in-chief of Portco News. She joined the publication in July 2024 when it was a Privitas publication.

Isabel also freelances for a number of major outlets, including The Guardian, France Today, and serves as the co-founder and president of the Association of Women in Business Journalism.

Previously, she served as a reporter at PEI Group, covering the Americas beat for Infrastructure Investor, a leading trade publication for the private infrastructure market. Her work also regularly appeared in sister publications such as New Private Markets and Secondaries Investor.

Her work has won numerous awards, notably the Aviva Investors Sustainability Media "Real Assets Publication of the Year" for 2022 and 2023, as well as "Best Script by a Female Screenwriter" for the 2022 New York Script Awards and the semifinalist distinction for the 2024-25 Athena Film Festival Writers Lab.

She is a graduate from the Dual BA Program between Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris. She studied economics, politics and creative writing (fiction).