Euro-denominated buyout funds, which play a prominent role in CPP Investment Board’s portfolio, have provided some solid returns over the years. But there is one player that shines above the rest, according to the Buyouts performance database.

peHUB fills you in on what not to miss in private equity in the week ahead including calPERS investment, performance and compensation committee meetings, Partners Group’s annual report and EVCA’s annual Investors’ Forum in Geneva.

As AXA gears up for a possible sale of its private equity unit, executives at the company could find themselves borrowing from The Carlyle Group’s playbook. AXA Private Equity, and particularly its chief executive, Dominique Senequier, are known to be seeking a management-led buyout financed in large part by one of its suitors.
[caption id="attachment_121431" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Dominique Senequier"][/caption]
Such a structure is exactly what Carlyle agreed to when it acquired a 50 percent voting stake (and 60 percent of the equity) in AlpInvest Partners, one of Europe’s largest fund-of-fund managers, earlier this year. For Carlyle, the merger helped to diversify its slate of businesses, and more importantly, helped to increase its tally of assets under management prior to its expected IPO next year.

For AXA Private Equity’s investors, a management-led buyout would offer incentives for keeping employees on board, something especially crucial in an era of “key-man” provisions. Senequier’s preference for a management-led buyout was first reported in the Financial Times.

One thing is for sure in the European private equity fund managers’ space, a US presence is a must-have if you want to assert yourself as a global player and have credibility with your investors.
This seems to count for both the veteran giants with tens of billions in their coffers such as Netherlands-based AlpInvest, UK-based Pantheon and Swiss-based Partners Group as well as the more modest players with single figure billions under management such as Switzerland- based fund-of-funds Adveq and CapVent and, most recently, London-based Hermes GPE.

Investment firms are being spun out of banks left and right—some, to keep companies in compliance with the new requirements imposed on banks via Dodd-Frank. peHUB has been tracking some of the spin-outs seeking capital, and some others, that have not yet needed to fundraise—but soon, might. While the fundraising market has been generous to some private equity firms, other PE shops could face difficulty bringing in capital absent of their big-brother LPs. Only time will tell….

The market is teeming with fundraising hopefuls, from spin-out groups seeking modest sums to mega-firms after multi-billion-dollar war chests. Around the world, more than 1,600 private equity funds are in the market seeking an estimated $673 billion, according to data provider Preqin. It’s a measure of the difficulty of securing commitments that so far their [...]

In an effort to build a bigger private equity portfolio, the $6.5 billion Municipal Employees Retirement System of Michigan has engaged a newly merged Carlyle and AlpInvest to manage as much as $750 million of the pension’s money.

The pension currently has a 9.6 percent allocation to private equity, or slightly more than $630 million in invested capital.

The new MERS initiative calls for $500 million to be invested by AlpInvest, the Netherlands-based fund-of-funds unit of Carlyle, plus $250 million to be invested by Carlyle’s managed funds group. The investment contract is for five years.

The Washington D.C.-based Carlyle Group, which now manages about $150 billion in assets, agreed in January to merge with AlpInvest. That merger, which was originally slated to close in March, had been delayed until July 1. The MERS deal is the first asset management deal to be announced by the newly merged private equity firm.

Following are the five slideshows most popular with peHUB readers the week of April 25.

1. Slideshow: New York City Shindig Photos!

2. Slideshow: Top 10 List Shows Cleantech Becoming Dominated by Handful of Investors

3. Slideshow: Carlyle’s Rubenstein, T.H. Lee’s Sperling, AlpInvest’s Doeksen, Others Speak at Buyouts New York

4. Slideshow: The Cleantech Companies Best Positioned to Go Public

5. Slideshow: The Best Time for a VC Promotion

Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors is in takeover talks with Intel, Qualcomm and Broadcom, Reuters reported, citing an article by Dutch paper De Telegraaf. NXP was bought out by private equity investors, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital, Silver Lake, Apax Partners and AlpInvest in 2006. The firm was partly listed by its private equity owners in August 2010.

AlpInvest’s management is expressing no small amount of glee at the sale of their company, Europe’s largest private equity investor, to the Carlyle Group by its Dutch pension fund owners, APG and PGGM. For the first time, AlpInvest’s management stands to gain a direct equity stake in firm, something that is nearly universal in the [...]