N.Y. Shop To Launch $3.5B Fundraise In Coming Days

CCMP Capital Advisors LLC will officially start raising its third fund in the next eight to 10 days, Buyouts reported yesterday, citing a source close to the process.

The New York-based firm will seek to raise $3.5 billion, as Buyouts first reported last November. That would mark a slight increase from the $3.4 billion fund that the firm raised in 2006. Credit Suisse will help it raise the fund.

CCMP Capital makes growth equity investments and buyouts in the consumer and retail, industrial, energy and health care sectors. The firm has been active in recent weeks as part of a group of private equity firms that have agreed to sell movie theater company AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. to China’s Dalian Wanda Group Corp. Inc. for $2.6 billion. CCMP also recently closed its acquisition of plastics processor Milacron LLC.

Fund III will mark the first time for the firm to raise capital without the assistance of former parent JPMorgan Chase & Co., which committed just under a quarter of the predecessor fund but can no longer do so from its own balance sheet because of the Volcker Rule  (However, JPMorgan can channel client money to the fund through funds of funds and other third-party asset management businesses.) To help diversify its investor base, CCMP Capital has been cultivating relationships with sovereign wealth funds in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Middle East, as Buyouts previously reported.

Formerly known as J.P. Morgan Partners and before that Chase Capital Partners, CCMP Capital spun out of the bank in 2006.

The firm is led by CEO Stephen Murray, who joined the firm in 1989 after working as a vice president in the mid-market lending division of Manufacturers Hanover; and Chairman Greg Brenneman, the former president and CEO of PwC Consulting. The firm has eight managing directors, including Jonathan Lynch, a managing director who joined the firm in 1992 from Prudential Securities, where he was a member of the mergers and acquisitions department; and Richard Zannino, who joined the firm in 2009 after serving as CEO at Dow Jones & Co.

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Bernard Vaughan is a senior editor at Buyouts Magazine. Follow his tweets @BVaughanReuters. Follow Buyouts tweets @Buyouts.