Dan Primack

Philip Rotner has stepped down as co-head of private equity investing with MIT Investment Management Co., in order to become the first chief investment officer of Boston Children’s Hospital. Rotner originally joined MIT in 1999, and shared responsibility for private equity investment with Daniel Steele. I’m not sure if there was an official VC/buyout split, […]

Reading today's Lex column on private equity, I was reminded of an old Stephen Colbert line about President Bush: "He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday." The shoddy column was about last week's sit-down between a group of big buyout firm executives and big pension fund managers, over the issue of fund structure guidelines published last September by the Institutional Limited Partner Association (ILPA).

Sun Capital Partners is in talks to sell weight-loss bar maker Elan Nutrition to ConAgra, according to an FTC filing. No financial information was disclosed, and a source says that the deal is not yet finalized. Sun sponsored a leveraged buyout of Elan Nutrition -- then known as Five Star Brands -- back in May 2003. The turnaround firm's initial outlay was around $18 million, including funds for capacity improvements that enabled Elan to begin producing upwards of 300 million bars

My weekly video segment for Reuters is about private equity exits, and whether or not 2010 is meeting raised expectations. Per usual, we taped just a few doors down from the home office: Watch more peHUB videos

Yesterday, a colleague and I spent most of the day trying to learn what happened at ILPA’s meeting of the minds between big buyout and big pension. Lots of emails, lots of phone calls. I even postponed a trip to purchase sandbags. In retrospect, it was probably a misuse of my time. And not just because my cat can now bypass his water bowl and lick straight from the floor. The much-ballyhooed meeting (yes, I did some of the hoo’ing) seems to have been much less than it was cracked up to be. Its purpose was to discuss the ILPA guidelines, but I’m told that the issue of fees – arguably the most vital piece of LP/GP interest alignment – wasn’t actually discussed. Moreover, giant firms like Bain, KKR and TPG weren’t in the room (which apparently was inside of the Times Square Westin).

A group of LBO bigs and pension fund chiefs today are meeting somewhere in New York City, to discuss the contentious issue of fund terms. The GP side will be repped by folks like David Rubenstein (Carlyle), Glenn Hutchins (Silver Lake), Jim Coulter (TPG) and Chip Kaye (Warburg Pincus). The LP side will be repped by Joe Dear (CalPERS), John Breen (Canada Pension Plan) and Ahmed Gubash (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority). Two quick thoughts, and then more via video: (1) A select group of GPs and LPs are going to secretly gather to discuss industry-wide fund terms, in order to preclude claims of collusion. Just let that sink in. (2) CalPERS and ADIA have stakes in Carlyle, while CalPERS also has a stake in Silver Lake. Not just LP interests, mind you, but actual pieces of the management companies. What side of the table will Dear and Gubash be sitting on?

The first quarter doesn’t officially close until the clock strikes Thursday, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a peek at preliminary deal volume data. My colleagues at Thomson Reuters sent over the following tidbits: * Global M&A deal volume for Q1 is at nearly $550 billion for 8,737 deals, compared to $617 billion for 10,860 deals in Q4 2009. The prior first quarter had just $476 billion for 8,908 deals. * Global PE-sponsored deal volume for Q1 is at just over $31 billion for 625 deals, compared to $55 billion for 761 deals in Q4 2009. The prior first quarter had just $17 billion for 639 deals. Private equity’s percentage of the total M&A pot is 5.7% in Q1 2010, which is the lowest total since Q2 of last year (3.2%).

Earlier today, I explained why Elevation Partners is far from the “the worst run institutional fund of any size in the United States?” Of course, this raised a follow-up question: So, what is the worst run institutional fund of any size in the United States? I don't think it's possible to give a definitive answer, at least when it comes to private equity and venture capital. After all, final judgement on these funds can only come once all the investments are realized. But we certainly can identify funds that are in trouble. To do so, I turned to CalPERS, which likely has more VC/PE fund investments than any other U.S. institution. CalPERS publicly discloses performance data for each of its 642 general partners, through the end of Q3 2009. I ranked each of those firms by IRR, excluding any fund closed in 2007 or later (such funds are relatively young, and their IRRs can be unfairly depressed by the fabled J-curve). I also removed non-U.S. funds, which means you won't see things like Permira Europe IV, Polish Enterprise Fund VI, Candover 2005 Fund or Carlyle Japan Partners. Get them after the jump...

Is Elevation Partners “the worst run institutional fund of any size in the United States?” That was the assertion of a Wall Street 24/7 post earlier this week, and a bunch of readers have emailed me for reaction. So I decided to take a dive into the media/tech-focused firm’s portfolio, from a financial perspective. What I found was hardly cause for celebration, particularly for a shop whose high-profile partners include Bono, Roger McNamee and Fred Anderson. At the same time, however, calling Elevation “the worst” is to give hyperbole a bad name. The knock on Elevation is that three of its largest investments are major duds: Palm, Move.com and Forbes Digital Media. So let’s look at them one by one:

Wachovia Capital Partners declared its independence from Wells Fargo yesterday, spinning off into a new firm called Pamlico Capital. I spent some time on the phone with managing partner Scott Perper, and here are some highlights in notes form: * The spin-off is unrelated to the proposed Volcker Rule, whereby banks would be required to divest in-house private equity groups. Perper says discussions over what to do with WCP began shortly after the Wells Fargo acquisition in late 2008. He also said that there were never discussions about merging WCP with Norwest Equity Partners, which receives all of its fund capital from Wells Fargo.