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Corsair Closes $1 Billion Fund | Alaska Sovereign Fund Eyes Outside Help | Georgian Raises $850 Million
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Good morning! Growth investing has blurred the lines between classic venture funds, in which a VC manager backs a startup that has proven a concept and has a team to make it work, and private equity, which traditionally has entered the financing picture at a much later stage, including through post-IPO buyouts. Today we have a look at one of the in-between versions, which call themselves growth-equity funds. WSJ Pro’s Isaac Taylor has some details on such a vehicle recently raised by Toronto’s Georgian Partners.
In other news from the north, WSJ Pro’s Preeti Singh has a look at Alaska’s oil-fed sovereign wealth fund, where private asset overseers are grappling with the idea of bringing on outside help. Closer to home for us in New York, WSJ Pro’s Laura Cooper reports Corsair Capital has raised a $1 billion fund as it broadens its strategy. All this and more awaits you, so read on...
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D.T. Ignacio Jayanti, managing partner at Corsair Capital. PHOTO: CORSAIR CAPITAL
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Financial-services specialist Corsair Capital has raised $1 billion for its latest private-equity fund, after some two years of collecting capital, WSJ Pro's Laura Cooper reports. The firm already has made six investments from the new fund, and is broadening its strategy to include technologvy providers to financial services industries as well as companies involved in wealth management and insurance distribution.
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Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. is weighing how to respond to proposals to take on some of the oversight tasks involving the $66.9 billion fund’s investments in alternative assets. Offers to partially outsource the activity came from two active managers who oversee investments in public equities, Steve Moseley, the fund’s head of alternative investments, told its board of trustees at a recent meeting in Juneau, the state capital.
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Georgian Partners, a Toronto-based firm that backs software companies, has collected at least $850 million in commitments for its latest growth fund, WSJ Pro's Isaac Taylor reports, citing a regulatory filing. Founded in 2008, the firm had targeted $750 million for the new growth investment vehicle, according to an earlier SEC filing. It collected at least $550 million for its predecessor fund in 2018.
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$5.03 Billion
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The volume of capital raised across 12 U.S. initial public offerings in January, more than double the $1.79 billion raised by six IPOs in January 2019, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence
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Univision Communications agreed to sell a 64% stake to Searchlight and ForgeLight. PHOTO: TIM RUE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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The sale of a majority stake in Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. to a buyer group led by a former Viacom Inc. executive and private-equity firm Searchlight Capital Partners has provided an exit for the firms that participated in a 2007 buyout that valued the company at $13.7 billion, Dave Sebastion and Benjamin Mullen report for The Wall Street Journal. The firms that are exiting include Providence Equity Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners, TPG and Thomas H. Lee Partners, along with Haim Saban's Saban Capital Group. The latest deal values the company at less than $10
billion, including debt.
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Growth investor Bregal Sagemount has acquired a minority stake in Critical Start Inc. with an investment of $40 million, the Plano, Texas-based network security company said Tuesday. The New York-based private-equity firm typically writes checks for $15 million to $100 million in companies with strong growth prospects and recurring revenue streams.
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Trivest Partners has backed a growth investment in Technology Concepts & Design Inc., a Greensboro, N.C.-based company that offers technology and services to law firms and corporations. The company’s services include electronic discovery, litigation management, document review and cybersecurity. Trivest said it backed the deal out of the Trivest Growth Investment Fund, a $225 million fund focused on growth equity and minority investments.
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Wynnchurch Capital said it has acquired Pennsylvania Machine Works, which manufactures high-pressure forged fittings and branch connections used by customers across industries that include downstream oil and gas, petrochemicals, liquified natural gas, shipbuilding and other industrial markets.
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Siris Capital Group has led a $50 million funding round invested in ecommerce enabler Digital River Inc. to finance the Minneapolis-based company’s growth. Along with Siris, the company said other participants included previous investors in the company.
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Align Capital Partners has acquired a majority stake in gasket maker Marco Rubber & Plastics LLC through a recapitalization of the Seabrook, N.H., company. The deal marked the first time a private-equity sponsor has invested in the 40-year-old manufacturer.
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Partners Group has offered 3.40 Australian dollars ($2.24) per share in cash to take health-care provider Healius Ltd. private. The St. Leonards, New South Wales-based company operates medical and diagnostic centers across Australia and employs about 13,000 people. Partners has already agreed to acquire a nearly 16% stake from a group of investment firms that includes Jangho Group Co. and EAB Holdings. The Partners deal values Healius at about A$2.12 billion ($1.4 billion).
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TA Associates has won an auction for AffiniPay LLC, an Austin, Texas-based provider of electronic payment systems designed for professional services companies, including law firms and accountancies, Luisa Beltran reported for sister publication Barron’s, citing people familiar with the matter. The company has earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $30 million a year. Growth investor Great Hill Partners first backed the company in 2015 and is one of the sellers, Barron's said.
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Canadian pension fund manager Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec has provided financing to Meridian Credit Union Ltd. through a subordinated debt of 125 million Canadian dollars ($93.7 million). The St. Catherine, Ontario-based bank is the province’s largest credit union and the third biggest in all of Canada.
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Our add-on deal interactive tool allows you to sort and analyze volumes of add-on deal data compiled by WSJ Pro. View more.
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Thomas H. Lee Partners has agreed to sell its majority stake in baked goods producer Give & Go Prepared Foods Corp. to Mondelēz International for around $1.19 billion. THL acquired the company in 2016 and under its ownership acquired at least two other companies that expanded the company into new categories. They include the muffin business of United Baking Co., which Give & Go bought in 2017.
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New York-based Snow Phipps Group has exited its investment in Kele Inc. with the company’s sale to the Stephens Group. Snow Phipps initially backed Kele in 2015 and completed several add-on acquisitions under the private-equity firms’ ownership, according to a news release. Kele distributes products used in commercial building automation systems.
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Salesforce.com Inc. has agreed to buy cloud and mobile software company Vlocity Inc. for about $1.33 billion, net of the value of shares currently owned by Salesforce, Josh Beckerman writes for Dow Jones Newswires. Salesforce Ventures is an investor in Vlocity, which said in March 2019 that $60 million of Series C financing brought its total funding to $163 million. Vlocity's backers have included Sutter Hill Ventures, Accenture PLC, New York Life Insurance Co. and Bessemer Venture Partners.
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Mainsail Partners said it has closed its latest fund, Mainsail Partners V LP, with a total of $531 million, including capital from the firm itself and executives affiliated with it. Mainsail targets investments in enterprise software companies with annual revenue of typically $4 million to $25 million each that have never received venture or private-equity capital. Late last year, the firm announced its first deal out of the new fund with a growth investment in SourceScrub, an information services software company that caters to the financial-services industry.
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Newbury Partners has collected at least $972.4 million so far for its latest secondary fund, Newbury Equity Partners V LP and related parallel vehicles, according to regulatory filings. The amount raised so far puts the fund more than half way toward a $1.75 billion offering amount indicated in the filings. Newbury, which typically targets investments in small and medium-sized secondary deals, closed its previous fund with around $1.45 billion in 2018.
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Mid Europa Partners, a private-equity firm focused on Central and Eastern Europe, has collected at least $567.85 million for Mid Europa Fund V LP and parallel vehicles, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm collected €526 million for the fund, which translated into $567.85 million at the time of the filing. Mid Europa is targeting €800 million for the fund, according to a June 2018 disclosure by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which disclosed an €80 million commitment at the
time.
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Harbert Management Corporation is seeking $700 million for Harbert Infrastructure Fund VI LP, according to a securities and Exchange Commission filing. Harbert’s infrastructure team typically invests $50 million to $150 million in projects valued at between $100 million and $500 million, including project-level debt, according to the firm’s website.
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China-focused private-equity firm CMC Capital Partners said it has raised more than $950 million for its latest dollar-denominated fund, CMC Capital Partners III LP. CMC Capital targets growth and expansion-stage investments in industries that include media, entertainment, technology and consumer products and services.
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Insight Partners said it has hired Nikhil Sachdev as a managing director to focus on software investments. Mr. Sachdev joins Insight from technology-focused hedge firm Altimeter Capital, where he was a partner. His career also includes stints at Bain Capital Private Equity and Providence Equity Partners.
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Blue Wolf Capital Partners has hired John Boncher as a strategic advisor. Mr. Boncher retired from Cupertino Electric, a large electrical engineering and construction company, in 2018 as president and chief executive. His role at Blue Wolf will include helping the leaders of the firm’s portfolio companies develop growth strategies.
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Employees of private-equity and venture-capital firms reported higher pay for the sixth straight year in 2019, according to a report Tuesday by Benchmark Compensation. Sixty-eight percent of respondents reported more than $200,000 in total compensation, with bonuses representing 45 percent and base pay 55 percent of the total, the report said. It is also a good environment for job seekers, with more than half of firms seeking investment professionals.
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Private-equity giants including Blackstone Group Inc. and Carlyle Group Inc. are among private asset managers hunting for deals involving mobile-home parks, Ryan Dezember reports for The Wall Street Journal. Trailer parks operate lots where tenants bring their own quarters that require no upkeep from the operator but pay rent for the land they occupy, making for a potentially profitable model based on recurring cash flow and low maintenance expenses.
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A £600 million ($780.6 million) U.K. Investment trust has dismissed a private-equity firm hired to oversee its assets and is now being targeted in a takeover bid backed by Invesco’s co-head of U.K. equities and trust investor, Mark Barnett, Mark Cobley reported for sister publication Private Equity News. Pollen Street Secured Lending said Tuesday that the former fund manager, Pollen Street Capital, had made “serious, repeated and ongoing breaches” of its contract with the trust. In response, Pollen Street Capital, the private-equity firm, said the move “does not reflect the substantial improvement in the performance” of the trust’s assets under its management. Barnett’s Invesco’s Income funds are the largest holders of trust shares and he is supporting a takeover bid from Waterfall Asset Management, a trust rival.
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Alta Mesa Resources Inc.’s lenders won a round in their court fight with unsecured creditors when a bankruptcy judge said he would allow the oil driller to pay a group of banks $150 million in return for providing cash for the company to wind down its business, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reports.
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Ted Bunker, Laura Cooper, Chris Cumming, Luis Garcia, Laura Kreutzer, William Louch, Preeti Singh, Chitra Vemuri.
Follow us on Twitter: @wsjpe, @LCooperReports, @LHVGarcia, @LauraKreutzer, @william_louch.
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