David Toll

Back in 2008 and 2009 I took an in-depth look at the performance of funds of funds and, well, found them lacking. I raised the question of whether they were worth the added layer of management fees and, in many cases, carried interest. This year I revisit the subject with a larger, 80-fund, pre-vintage 2007 […]

Tully Friedman, who formed his famous partnership with the late Warren Hellman in 1984, remembers the first time they met. It was around 1970, Tully was looking to break into investment banking after starting his career as an attorney, and he was visiting the New York offices of Lehman Brothers. The late Steven Fenster, then […]

HealthCor Partners Management, an investor in fast-growing health care and life sciences companies, is out seeking $300 million—a tally that would double the firm’s assets under management if achieved. The New York-based firm is part of the HealthCor Group, a hedge-fund manager and private equity shop with more than $3 billion under management. According to […]

CalPERS didn’t want them. Secondary firms didn’t buy them. And so they’ve been banished to what the nation’s largest public pension fund calls its “Vista Portfolio”—a place where fund interests get managed “toward liquidation,” in the pension fund’s own phrase. You can find the Vista Portfolio on the CalPERS Alternative Investment Management Program web site, although it’s easy to […]

The federal government played nursemaid to the venture capital market through its SBIC program launched in 1958. Now it’s looking to the same program to help guide VC through its mid-life crisis—and it wants your feedback on how to do it. The original Small Business Investment Company program aimed at financing startups, called the participating-securities SBIC […]

For one, they’re both big players in the private equity market. In fact, in the home stretch to the November election, President Barack Obama may have trouble ripping into the private equity record of Mitt Romney (should Romney secure the nomination). The Obama administration has been quickly ratcheting up its own participation in the market—and […]

Alternative investments such as infrastructure and private equity aren’t for the shallow-pocketed. Data provided by the Maine Public Employees Retirement System reveals just how big a bite fees and expenses can take in the early years of limited partnerships. Take Carlyle Infrastructure Partners, a fund to which MainePERS committed $50 million in November 2007. Of that sum […]

Kelly M. Williams, managing director and global head of the Credit Suisse Customized Fund Investment Group, pulls no punches in describing the big challenge that prospective general partners have in winning a commitment from her team. Delivering a keynote address earlier this month at Buyouts Texas, a conference hosted by sister magazine Buyouts, Williams first expressed […]

First came word from the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that New York buyout shop Vestar Capital Partners is beating a complete retreat from its European operations. And then yesterday the Financial Times reported that Fort Worth, Texas-based TPG Capital is rearranging priorities in Europe, placing less emphasis on buyouts and more on non-performing loans and restructuring. (Sources confirmed the main thrust of both stories to me; Vestar Capital, which has had offices in Europe since 1999, has decided to focus laser-like on the United States, its primary market over its last several funds. The withdrawal has been several years in the making.) You'd think buyout firms have had a hard time generating solid returns on their European investments. But, if so, that's not always been the case, judging from the results of five European funds in the returns database of sister magazine Buyouts. Managed by The Carlyle Group, Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts & Co., and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, the five, running from vintage years 1998 to 2005, have generated a median investment multiple of 2x and a median internal rate of return of 21.5 percent. Perhaps tellingly, the worst performer to date is also the youngest--the 2005 KKR European Fund II, which is just slightly in the black according to backer Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund. Click through below to see more details on the performance of this and the other four U.S.-sponsored European funds in our database.

All the talk of a pending buyout shakeout this week on peHUB coincides nicely with the annual fund performance review by sister publication Buyouts Magazine. Needless to say, managers of bottom-quartile funds have to be deemed most at risk for getting shaken out. And we’re making them easy to spot. The infographic below, derived from our performance database, dramatically illustrates, in brightly […]