StepStone Group said Tuesday it closed its secondary private equity fund at $450 million. StepStone Secondary Opportunities Fund II LP exceeded its original target of $350 million and closed at the hard cap. Together with allocated capital from separately managed accounts, StepStone has raised approximately $650 million for a focused and differentiated strategy within the secondaries market.

Blair Jacobson has left the StepStone Group for Ares Management.

It appears there might be a new buyout shop in Philadelphia. Skip Maner, one of four managing principals at Inverness Graham Investments, another buyout shop based outside of Philadelphia, is now at a firm called Parkes Run Capital, according to his LinkedIn account. Parkes Run is “a private equity firm focused on lower middle market [...]

Following the best performance in 25 years for Wisconsin’s main pension fund, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board outlined long range plans to commit more than $6 billion to private equity through 2016, including $1 billion in both 2011 and 2012, rising to $1.4 billion per year in 2015 and 2016, according to a report by StepStone Group, Wisconsin’s private equity advisor.

Overall, the IRR for Wisconsin’s private equity portfolio was 12.9 percent for the year through March, beating the portfolio’s 12.1 percent benchmark, according to StepStone. Private equity returns for Wisconsin represented a gain of $949 million for the year.

Want to catch up on what your colleagues found most interesting on peHUB this week? Here are the posts written by our staff that garnered the most pageviews from March 21 to March 25.

1. Slideshow: Top 10 Largest First Rounds Of Internet Companies This Year by Larry Aragon

2. Meet the First ‘Social Media Analyst on Wall Street’ by Connie Loizos

3. Which Buyout-backed IPO in 2010 is the Best Performer? by Eamon Beltran

4. And the Winner of Mid-market Deal of the Year Is… by David Toll

5. Andreessen Horowitz Brings Aboard a Face Familiar to the VC Industry by Connie Loizos

6. By the Numbers: Washington State Investment Board’s Buyout Performance by David Toll

7. Yuri Milner Said To Purchase $70M Silicon Valley Home by Mark Boslet

8. If It’s Pizza You’re Ordering, MidOcean’s Had Enough by Bernard Vaughan

9. Looking For High-Growth, Low-Profile Startups? Check out Momentum Index by Connie Loizos

10. Did StepStone’s PCG ties Cost It The New Mexico Advisor Deal by Jon Marino

The New Mexico State Investment Council reversed its decision to hire Calif.-based StepStone Group to help it manage its $1.3 billion PE portfolio, and is now in final negotiations to hire LP Advisors as its private equity advisor instead. The council was “unable to reach a mutually satisfying agreement” with StepStone Group, its chief information [...]

Citigroup has transferred management of various in-house private equity funds to StepStone Group. The bank also sold a portion of its interest in those funds to private equity group Lexington Partners. The two deals, first announced in July, are part of Citi’s strategy to reduce assets within Citi Holdings, the company’s portfolio of non-core operating businesses. Financial terms were not released.

StepStone Group has acquired SilverBrook Private Equity, the group announced today. Stepstone had previously purchased Citigroup Private Equity, and is on a stated mission of “balancing the firm’s US presence between the east and west coasts.” As part of the deal, Thomas Bradley, Mark Maruszewski, and Michael McCabe, the SilverBrook partners, will join StepStone as managing directors based in New York City. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

StepStone Group LLC named Weichou Su a managing director in the firm’s new Beijing, China office, which officially opened on Sept. 14. Su will focus on investment activities in China and throughout Asia. Su previously served as a managing director of Hina Group.

My weekly video spot for Reuters was about this morning’s scoop that Citi has agreed to sell more than $900 million worth of private equity assets to Lexington Partners. Per usual, I’m taping just a few paces away from the home office:

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