Lone Star looks to lasso $6 bln for Lone Star Fund X

Lone Star Funds, the distressed asset specialist, upped its target for its latest flagship pool by $1 billion, with $6 billion now intended for Lone Star Fund X, according to a filing.

The firm moved the fundraising bar up from $5 billion for Lone Star Fund X as disclosed in a June filing.

The Dallas firm is following up the $7.2 billion it raised with Lone Star Fund IX, a vintage 2014 fund that’s now made 26 investments for an aggregate price of $25.3 billion, according to the firm’s website.

Lone Star Funds did not immediately return a phone call from Buyouts.

Among recent investments by Loan Star Fund, the firm paid an undisclosed sum in the second quarter for Shearing Leisure Group Ltd; also its Forterra Building Products platform acquired USP Holdings.

John Grayken, chairman, and André Collin, president, lead Lone Star. Grayken founded the firm in 1995 after he acquired and later resolved impaired assets from the U.S. savings and loan crisis in the 1990s.

Lone Star Funds invests in real estate, equity, credit and other financial assets, with 16 funds and aggregate commitments of more than $65 billion.

Also on the fundraising front, Lone Star has been in the market for Lone Star Real Estate Fund V to invest in debt and equity of commercial property assets in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. That pool closed with $5.5 billion in commitments in April.

On the legal front, Lone Star Funds in August was named in a lawsuit filed by MFY Legal Services, a non-profit that works with low-income residents in New York. The suit alleges the Federal Housing Agency may have disproportionately hurt African-American homeowners through the practice of selling delinquent mortgages. The firm owns a mortgage servicing company called Caliber Home Loans.

Action Item: Lone Star Funds, http://www.lonestarfunds.com/contact-us/

Photo: A sign advertising Lone Star beer hangs on the wall next to a jackalope trophy at Perini Ranch Steakhouse in Buffalo Gap, Texas December 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Stone