Firms and Funds

BERLIN (Reuters) – British private equity firm 3i Group Plc (III.L) believes anxiety over its debt burden is misplaced and that the market will ultimately recognize the strength of its assets, a senior executive said. “Clearly the shareholders have a concern about it, or that’s what you would believe if you read the analysts reports […]

UK mid-market private equity firm LDC has launched in the Benelux market. The firm has announced the appointment of Ronald Verhoef as director of its Netherlands operation. The news follows the opening of a Hong Kong office earlier this year as the formerly UK-focused buyout group becomes an international concern. In January, it revealed that […]

(Reuters) – U.S. private equity firm TPG Capital is scaling back the $6 billion fund it raised to invest in distressed financial companies, the Financial Times reported. TPG told investors it has decided to return 25 percent of that money to investors, the paper said, citing investors of the private equity firm. TPG said it […]

Yesterday peHUB reported that Credit Suisse had started a secondary intermediary group to advise LPs on the sales of their private equity interests. We also reported a rumour that Goldman Sachs has a group in the works, which will require starting from scratch since the firm doesn’t even have a fund placement group. Now we’re […]

Sun Capital has a $1.1 billion* hedge fund called Sun Capital Securities. Its stated strategy had been to take non-controlling equity stakes in public companies. To date, the fund has basically been a zero. But even though it's fully invested, the firm isn't content to passively plod along. Rather, Sun has revamped the fund into a distressed debt investor. The majority of the firm's recent round of 23 layoffs were a result of this shift, a person close to the firm said. (Eight more were performance-related.) But that presents a bit of a conundrum for the existing portfolio, which includes minority investments such companies as Berkline BenchCraft Holdings and Souper Salad.

Since December of 2007, Blackstone Group has been in the market with its Real Estate Special Situations Fund. To date, it's only accumulated $113.5 million in commitments from 40 investors, according to a regulatory filing. It has a target of $1 billion. The fund's focus, according to its website: Its investment portfolio is expected to consist of a variety of real estate and real estate-related securities, including mezzanine debt, publicly-traded debt securities, whole loans, preferred equity, bridge equity, publicly-traded equity securities, and joint venture equity. BSSF is led by Michael Nash, Senior Managing Director of The Blackstone Group L.P. and the Chief Investment Officer of BSSF.

Another Section 363 purchase-turned-Chapter 22: Fortunoff, the upscale jewelery store, has filed for bankruptcy just 10 months after NRDC Equity Partners purchased it out of bankruptcy. (A few weeks ago the same thing happened to Versa Capital, with portfolio company American Restaurant Group.) Can’t say we didn’t expect it, though. The buyout strategy always seemed like a stretch: NRDC stated it would not close a single Fortunoff store. It also purchased the company for more than $80 million and only put down $10 million in equity. How could that possibly save a retailer that had simply stopped paying its bills and had already exhausted more than one sale-leaseback? Upon closer examination, you have to wonder if it’s a sign of things to come for NRDC’s portfolio. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran a perplexing story about Richard Baker, the head of NRDC and son of successful real estate investor Robert Baker. The article describes Baker as

NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Federal officials pushed Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) hard to complete its acquisition of Merrill Lynch even as credit losses mounted at the troubled investment bank, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, without citing any named sources. Bank of America arguably saved Merrill from collapse in September when […]

NextStage raises €61m for second fund

Ratos buys Swedish materials specialist