Investor Commitments

Investors and fund managers alike are waking up to the appeal of GP interest vehicles.

The US's largest public pension made $3.3bn of commitments to private equity in the 2016-17 fiscal year, down from $4bn the previous year, according to documents released this week.

The fund of funds has chosen to support funds that have 'stayed in their sweet spot rather than those jumping in tremendously in fund size', according to partner Maninder Saluja.

The 500 largest fund managers held $2.5trn of alternative AUM at the end of last year, up 5% from 2015, according to the P&I/Willis Towers Watson global 500.

The investment manager aims to secure the funds from Middle Eastern investors by 2019, chief executive Jean Claude Bastos de Morais tells PEI.

The firm’s COO, Tony James, sees the traditional 10-year private equity fund as ‘a bit of a treadmill’.

Domestic LPs demonstrated a strong increase in appetite for French private equity in H1, with commitments climbing to €5.4bn from €3.2bn a year ago, according to a report.

Industry practitioners agree the best managers in the lower mid-market are producing the best returns private equity can offer – but identifying those groups is not an easy task.

The private equity investor has raised $389m for its third co-investment programme, which will invest alongside a further $230m through sidecars and separate mandates.

Details of the fund’s terms were revealed in documents prepared for Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System.