Steve Gelsi

Summit Partners is raising $3 billion for its ninth middle-market fund, 11 percent more than it did for a predecessor fund four years ago, according to regulatory documents.

Sure, top-ranked GPs strive to buy companies with potential, grow them and sell them for great returns. But it turns out these elite managers also are adept at buying and selling these targets at opportune times.

Apollo Global Management’s middle-market lending unit MidCap Financial now tips the scales with gross assets of $3.3 billion as a growth business for the firm led by Leon Black. It’s another contender backed by a heavyweight vying to provide loans to middle-market sponsors. 

While firms like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs deploy feeder funds and other vehicles for individuals to invest in alternatives, an estimated 50,000 independent wealth advisors lack the technology and services to provide access to the asset class for their clients.

Huntsman Gay Capital Partners Fund LP, the vintage debut fund from HGGC, rang up an IRR of 18.2 percent as of Dec. 31, 2014 for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, placing close to a top-quartile performance for that vintage year. HGGC CEO Rich Lawson talked about the fund in a phone interview.  

Apollo Global Management and Ares Management drew mostly positive comments from Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings on separate plans to buy smaller businesses that will spike debt levels as both firms work to scale up.

Q&A with Jeri Harman, CEO, co-founder and managing partner of lower middle-market lender Avante Mezzanine Partners.

Noranda Aluminum, a portfolio company of Apollo Global Management until May of this year, drew a debt downgrade from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services in the face of low commodity prices. The company also faces uncertainty around an explosion and fire at a smelter in August. 

Trive Capital is moving quickly through fundraising on its sophomore investment vehicle that is targeting up to $500 million for complex situations and corporate carve-outs in the lower middle market, according to two people with knowledge of the firm.

Huge swings in global equities are expected to cause sponsors to tread more cautiously both on acquisitions, initial public offerings and stock sales, but so far no fundamental shift in the deal-making environment is widely seen.