Good day. With reports from our Journal colleagues suggesting “substantial” assets held by the FTX crypto company have either gone missing or have been stolen, one of its backers, Sequoia Capital, offered an apology to investors in the firm’s funds that sank more than $213 million into the Bahamas-based business, as Berber Jin writes for the paper. The FTX situation is enough to make you wonder how assets on a blockchain registry could disappear—something the technology purportedly prevents—and why crypto should be regarded as anything other than a shell game, whatever its form.

In other news, our Chris Cumming writes that Calpers is reshuffling duties and combining assets under the growth and venture headings with private equity. The pension system has put the combined group under recently hired Anton Orlich and changed his role.

Finally, our Rod James reports that the New Mexico State Investment Council is backing a venture investment fund run by a nonprofit with the goal of boosting U.S. strategic and economic interests. The firm, America’s Frontier Fund, aims to invest in sectors such as microelectronics and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, new energy sources, synthetic biology and quantum sciences.

We have all that and more condensed and linked for you below, so please read on...

NOTE: We won’t publish a newsletter tomorrow or Friday in observance of the U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday but will resume publication on Monday, Nov. 28. See you then!

The nation’s largest public-pension plan, stung by staff turnover in recent years, has tapped a newly hired executive to expand its private-markets program, Chris Cumming reports for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, with assets of about $442.72 billion, said Anton Orlich will lead its private-equity program. He replaces Greg Ruiz, who left last month to join Menlo Park, Calif.-based Jasper Ridge Partners as a partner. Calpers last month named Mr. Orlich as managing investment director for its Growth & Innovation group, a newly created position overseeing the pension’s higher-growth, higher-risk investments. Those strategies are being combined with the broader private-equity group under Mr. Orlich.

The New Mexico State Investment Council has committed $100 million to a new venture-capital strategy focused on advanced technologies that support U.S. strategic and economic interests, Rod James reports for WSJ Pro Private Equity. The council’s investment committee approved its commitment to America’s Frontier Fund’s first vehicle, Frontier Fund I LP, at a meeting Tuesday. The council directs investments from the state’s roughly $34 billion sovereign wealth fund. The newly formed nonprofit’s inaugural fund will invest in “frontier technologies” considered “vital to the long-term economic prosperity and national security” of the country, according to a council staff report. Target sectors include microelectronics and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, new energy sources, synthetic biology and quantum sciences.

In a recent call with its fund investors, Sequoia Capital executives apologized for money the firm lost on bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Berber Jin writes for The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation. The venture capital firm's executives also told investors that it would improve its due-diligence process on future investments and that they believe the firm was misled by FTX, based on its recent bankruptcy filing, the people said. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Sequoia said Nov. 9 on Twitter that it had marked down $213.5 million in FTX investments to zero over solvency risk at the crypto company.

Sustainable food-focused Paine Schwartz Partners has agreed to acquire publicly traded AgroFresh Solutions Inc. for $3 per share in cash, a transaction that reportedly values the business at about $158 million. Philadelphia-based AgroFresh offers technology, products and services that help extend the shelf life of fresh produce. Paine Schwartz in June 2020 agreed to invest $150 million in the company’s preferred shares. Late last month AgroFresh said it was pursuing a full buyout with the firm.

Hellman & Friedman and Permira said they have closed their $10.2 billion deal to take private customer relationship management software company Zendesk Inc. in San Francisco for $77.50 per share in cash. The transaction is one of the largest private-equity buyouts to close so far this year.

Financial-technology specialist investment firm Motive Partners in New York said it has agreed to acquire fin-tech venture investor embedded/capital GmbH and plans to combine it with its Motive Ventures, a partnership it set up almost a year ago with Apollo Global Management Inc. The combined operation will have 14 staff members working from offices in Berlin, London and New York should the deal close as expected by year-end.

Growth investor Jeito Capital said it co-led a €50 million, or about $51.5 million, investment in clinical-stage cancer therapies developer CatalYm GmbH with Brandon Capital, with several existing investors also participating in the Series C round. The Munich-based company set up on its own in 2016, according to a news release.

New York-based private investment firm TZP Group has backed Soccer Post Holdings LLC, an Eatontown, N.J.-based specialty retailer focused on local markets across the U.S., according to a press release.

Restaurant-focused Savory Fund, operating from Lehi, Utah has sold a majority interest in soda brand Swig to investment firm Larry H. Miller Co. in Sandy, Utah, retaining a minority stake alongside company founder Nicole Tanner and other managers, according to a news release. Mercato Partners affiliate Savory acquired the Pleasant Grove, Utah-based brand in 2018.

Our add-on deal interactive tool allows you to sort and analyze volumes of add-on deal data compiled by WSJ Pro. View more.

Access Capital Partners has hit the €400 million target, the equivalent of $409.7 million, for its second fund focused on co-investments in European infrastructure deals, according to a press release. The firm, which announced an initial closing of the fund early last year on €143 million, has already deployed about 45% of the fund’s capital across eight investments, according to an emailed press release.

Raven Capital Management in New York said it has closed on $834 million for its Raven Asset-Based Credit Fund II LP and related vehicles, surpassing a $500 million target and almost three times more than the $288 million raised for a predecessor fund. The firm also said that it has set up Raven Evergreen Credit Fund II LP as a perpetual capital pool to invest alongside the new fund. With the closing, Raven said it now has more than $2 billion in assets under management.

Bain Capital has hired Will Rosen as general counsel in Europe for its private-equity operations, sister publication Financial News in London reports. Mr. Rosen, who joins from law firm Ropes & Gray, has been working directly with the Boston-based investor on a temporary basis since September 2021 and has now joined the firm permanently. At Ropes & Gray, Mr. Rosen led its London office.

Intermediate Capital Group PLC in London has named Madeleine Cosgrave as a senior advisor to its real estate group. She was previously head of Europe for the real estate arm of Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.

Kingsbarn Capital Management, the alternative assets management arm of Kingsbarn Realty Capital in Las Vegas, said it has added Jim Fowler as chief investment officer overseeing two investment funds, among other duties. He was most recently a senior partner with JMP Group, where he managed hedge funds and a credit fund.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management arm has agreed to pay a $4 million penalty over allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to abide by environmental, social and governance policies it had said it would use to select investments by two mutual funds and one separately managed account, according to an SEC news release. The agency cited several failures from April 2017 to February 2020, without saying whether any investors were harmed by not following ESG diligence procedures outlined in fund marketing materials. Goldman’s asset management unit consented to a cease-and-desist order, a censure and the $4 million penalty without admitting or denying the allegations.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s assets fell 7.5% in the 12 months through September to $288.6 billion, after further write downs of private assets in the most recent quarter added to a 1.3% net investment loss in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended June 30, according to Fitch Ratings in Chicago. The fund’s assets fell 4.3% over the most recent quarter from $301.6 billion at the end of June, according to the system’s website and Fitch. The most recent fiscal year loss was its first since 2009.

The New York State Common Retirement Fund for government workers ended September with about $233.2 billion in assets and recorded a nearly 3.9% loss for the previous three months, according to New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who cited market volatility for the decline. The fund invested about 15.3% of its assets in private equity and more than 42% in publicly traded stocks, 13.5% in real assets and 6.2% in hedge funds and credit vehicles, with the rest in cash, bonds and mortgages. The fund’s value had fallen 14.3% for the six months following March 31, when it held assets of $272.1 billion.

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Maria Armental; Ted Bunker; Chris Cumming; Luis Garcia; Rod James; Laura Kreutzer; Chitra Vemuri.

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