When the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest pension fund in the United States, announced in mid-September it was divesting from hedge funds the decision sent waves through the private equity community—see accompanying chart. A survey by secondary buyer Coller Capital conducted shortly after the decision found nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of investors believe that large investors will reconsider their own commitments to hedge funds in light of CalPERS’s action.
Who’s coming back to market in 2015? We’re making our best predictions.
It is not looking good for those hoping for a quick rebound in oil prices.
Energy and power fundraising continues to soar despite a recent drop in oil prices.
U.S.-based buyout and mezzanine firms raised an estimated year-to-date amount of $200.2 billion through December 11. That figure is up from $168.7 billion at this time a year ago and has surpassed 2013’s total by nearly a full $10 billion.
Everyone knows it takes a good four or five years for a private equity fund to mature to the point where results are meaningful. But it is still tempting to try to identify early winners from more recent vintages. And on that front early high achievers among buyout funds for Oregon Public Employees Retirement System include the vintage 2010 Veritas Capital Fund IV (1.89x investment multiple) and the 2011 vintage WLR Recovery Fund V (1.54x) and Advent International GPE VII-C (1.36x).
The number of private equity-backed companies listed in Standard & Poor’s “weakest links” report published in November is up to 35 from 19 when the list was last reviewed by Buyouts. The number of portfolio companies that filed for default doubled from four to eight, and one more portfolio company went into bankruptcy, bringing that total to five.
The North American private equity benchmark created by Cambridge Associates for the Institutional Limited Partners Association beat the average internal rate of return achieved by the ‘all funds’ category, both short and long-term, as of June 30. Among the poorer performers, the funds of funds and secondaries categories are seated below the ‘all funds’ average for each benchmark term. The table shows pooled net IRRs for benchmarks based on data from some 3,001 unique funds.
Although not always true, in the case of private equity returns, bigger certainly is better when it comes to the global PE horizon IRR. The accompanying graph shows IRR by fund size. No matter the year mark, the mega-sized funds of $1 billion-plus sport the biggest return.
The Blackstone Group and Apollo Global Management have produced the top-performing funds in the private equity portfolio of backer New York City Employees’ Retirement System.