Random Ramblings

Parthenon Capital has received a fund-raising extension from its limited partners, despite having been in market for nearly two years on its $1 billion-targeted Fund III. It also has retained MVision to serve as placement agent. 

Parthenon has pretty good returns, so the only explanation here is that LPs are still turned off by Parthenon’s 2003 decision to commit around 20% of its $750 million second fund into since-failed Atkins Nutritionals. I wrote one year ago that the Boston-based firm would hit its target, and I still believe that. But it sure is taking way too long.

*** The Australian management team of Deutsche Bank Venture Capital has spun out into an independent entity called Accede Capital.

*** My colleague Alexander Haislip attended the CleanTech Venture Forum in New York last week, and reports on several new firms.

*** Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in yesterday’s NY Times that the clubby world of mega-LBO firms is beginning to chill, in part due to intentional uncooperativeness during the HCA and Freescale deals. But the piece’s most prescient line comes at the end: “Even the idea of a hostile bid by a private equity firm, once all but unthinkable, could become a reality.”