Searchlight Capital, the PE firm founded by former KKR and Apollo execs, is raising $750 million for its first fund, sources say.

The pool is fully subscribed, sources say.

“They are oversubscribed at their current target and basically closed already,” one placement source says.

News of the Searchlight fundraising was reported in May 2010 by the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ, at that time, said that Searchlight was marketing for a $500 million to $1 billion fund.

Don’t expect a rush of private equity execs to start their own firms, said Eric Zinterhofer, co-founder of Searchlight Capital.

Zinterhofer, who was speaking at the Buyouts Conference in Dallas Thursday, was asked about a Triago report that predicts up to half of GPs could disappear in the next five years as junior PE execs form their own firms. “I don’t think you’ll see a ton of new guys starting their own firms,” Zinterhofer said during the Newsmakers panel.

Why is this? Some PE execs may complain, but most don’t end up leaving their firms, Zinterhofer told me on the sidelines of the conference. “While there is always a degree of angst among senior professionals at PE firms, at the end of the day the job is very attractive and the ‘golden handcuffs’ are significant,” Zinterhofer said.

It’s also a tough fundraising environment for …

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Searchlight Capital Partners, a media-focused private equity firm working to launch its debut fund, has come closer to reaching its initial goal of raising $1 billion, according to people familiar with the fund.

In addition, federal filings reveal that the firm has so far raised several hundred million dollars, although those figures could include some overlap. The $1 billion goal is considered large for a first-time fund, although the firm’s three founders are by no means new to the private equity space.

The three founders of Searchlight have overseen deals in media and other industries at two top private equity firms as well as one of Canada’s leading pension funds. Before co-founding Searchlight, Eric Zinterhofer helped lead media and telecommunications investing at Apollo Global Management, where he was a partner. He remains the chairman of Charter Communications, the St. Louis, Missouri-based cable television giant.