PE HUB Wire Highlights, 9.13.19

First-time fund reaches beyond hard cap, CalPERS drama

How ya doing Hubskis?

How’s your week been? Plenty of news going down lately as we move into the fall.

Leaver: David Mansell, a long-time executive at Onex Partners, is leaving the firm, I reported this week. Mansell joined Onex in 2002 and focused on the consumer and packaging industries. He worked on numerous deals, including SIG Combibloc, KraussMaffei, sgsco, Husky Injection Molding Systems, TMS International and Spirit AeroSystems. Check out my story here.

Last year, Onex’s middle market group, Oncap, decided to delay the launch of a small-cap platform called Oncap Growth after losing Evan Hershberg, the senior exeuctive focused on the effort. Hershberg left and earlier this year joined Leonard Green & Partners.

New shop: Former Energy Capital Partners executive Rahul Advani has formed SER Capital Partners to invest in sustainable, environmentally focused and renewable energy, I reported this week. SER is working on several pre-fund deals and is expected to launch its first fund. Check out my story here for the target and other particulars.

Another new GP closed its first fund earlier this month. MiddleGround Capital, formed by ex-Monomoy executives John Stewart, Lauren Mulholland and Scot Duncan last year, closed its debut fund on $459.5 million. MiddleGround was targeting $425 million with a $450 million hard cap. The firm received a $75 million anchor commitment from Archean Capital Partners, a joint venture of Veritable and Moelis Asset Management. It worked with Credit Suisse as placement agent on the fundraising.

MiddleGround has deployed more than $150 million of equity capital across three platform investments within its first 12 months. It acquired Alco Manufacturing in July 2018, Peterson Spring in April 2019 and Steel Craft Corp in May, the firm said in a statement.

Have you heard of other first-time or emerging funds raising money? Hit me up at cwitkowsky@buyoutsinsider.com.

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