Apax Globis Japan Joint Venture Seeks $100 Million

Apax Partners in March launched Apax Globis Partners, a 50/50 joint venture with Globis Corporation, a Japanese investment group. Globis Capital, the venture arm of Globis Corp., raised its first fund of $5.4 million in 1996. The vehicle, which focused on start-up and early-stage investment, was supported by investors including Tokyo Marine Capital, Benesse Corporation and CSK Venture Capital.

Yoshito Hori, founder and president of Globis Corp., will head Apax Globis Partners as managing director.

The new joint venture firm is already marketing to investors in the US, Europe and Japan, seeking to raise at least $100 million (euro 93 million), and possibly as much as

$150 million, for investment in Japan.

Apax Globis Partners will target knowledge-intensive businesses and, within this category, is likely to be biased towards the information technology, telecommunications and media sectors rather than biotechnology and healthcare. Like other Apax group funds, the Japanese vehicle will encompass companies at all stages of development. Given the relatively underdeveloped state of Japan’s buyout market, however, the likelihood is that early-stage and expansion capital investments will predominate in the fund’s portfolio, at least during the early part of its investment life, although pressure on Japanese corporations to restructure and refocus in the wake of the Asian economic crisis is expected to spur development of the country’s buyout market in the medium term.

Ronald Cohen, chairman of Apax, said Globis and Apax have a shared focus on entrepreneurially-led companies in growth sectors, adding “Although the Asian region has been experiencing a period of economic turmoil, we believe that the same entrepreneurial trends that have been so much in evidence in Europe will prevail in Japan and offer considerable opportunities”.

Apax Globis Partners hopes to finish fund raising by the year end. Apax in March completed a major fund-raising exercise, which amassed a total of euro 2.1 billion for investment across Europe (story, page 3).