Greg Baty, a Hamilton Lane VP, was  named to the board of the Florida Venture Forum. The forum is an entrepreneurial networking group in that state.

Hamilton Lane, which provides PE asset management services, said Thursday that it plans to open an office in Rio de Janeiro. It has hired Ricardo Fernandez Silva Jr. and Filipe Caldas as VPs to expand the firm’s presence in Brazil. Both Fernandez and Caldas were previously with Capital Dynamics.

Thomson Reuters’ Buyouts New York conference kicked off today with a star-studded list of speakers. Among the big names on today’s bill were David Rubenstein (pictured), co-founder of The Carlyle Group, Volkert Doeksen, CEO of AlpInvest, Scott Sperling, co-president of Thomas H. Lee Partners, and Erik Hirsch, CIO of Hamilton Lane. Take a peek into [...]

Boca Raton, Fla.-based LOC-AID has raised $13 million in Series C financing. H.I.G. Ventures led the round, which included participation from Intersouth Partners, and the Florida Growth Fund, which is managed by Hamilton Lane. The new money will help LOC-AID expand its technology, which includes location-based services for fraud prevention, proximity marketing, asset management and check-in services.

Big news from the LP world, as we’ve learned that the $74 billion Washington State Investment Board has chosen Hamilton Lane as its new private equity consultant.

The pension system has around $13.5 billion in private equity assets, and had spent the past five years using Capital Dynamics (which, in turn, had taken over for Pacific Corporate Group).

He predicted he’d be misquoted and taken out of context, so I will try not to do that here. Very simply, Eric Hirsch, Chief Investment Officer of Hamilton Lane, believes that limited partners should not view private equity pros as partners. GPs, he said, provide a service to LPs, and should act accordingly.

Speaking in a keynote interview at Buyouts South in Boca Raton, Hirsch noted his comment might get him in trouble with some GPs, but nevertheless made the argument against the idea of a “parternship.” That phrase twists the real meaning of an LP-GP relationship, he said. “The word “partner” makes it seem like an LP needs to support a GP even when things go awry, because they are partners,” he said. When in reality, investors have hired general partners to generate superior returns over a 10-year period and the relationship should be viewed as such.

I’m at the PEA Conference at the Grand Hyatt in New York. The theme is “Where do we go from here?” which seems ironic, since that could have easily been the theme for the PEA Outlook conference in September. If you remember, that took place just days after the Lehman, Merrill and AIG disasters. It’s probably safe to say little has improved since then.

I’ll be attending various panels and liveblogging two events: At 9:40, a one-on-one Q&A with Erik R. Hirsch, the Chief Investment Officer of Hamilton Lane. You can find that here. At 5:05, I’ll liveblog a self-proclaimed “not-so-shy” panel called “Opinions, Opinions, Opinions.” Isn’t that all these conferences are in the first place? You can find that here.. I’ll post updates in between on topics like Cleantech, financial services, portfolio company clean-up, and of course, Pontifications On The Future. I may also be commenting on the events at the official peHUB Twitter.