Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Bain Capital Is B-a-a-c-k: Raising $8 billion




In case you haven’t been paying attention to the Romney headlines, it’s America's best-known private equity firm and it’s returning to market.  Fortune reports that Bain Capital has told investors that it plans to begin raising its eleventh general buyout fund sometime next month, according to sources familiar with the situation. The target will be $6 billion, plus a $2 billion "sidecar" fund for co-investments on large deals.

This is significantly smaller than the $10 billion+ Bain raised for its tenth fund in 2010 (plus a $1.8b sidecar), and reflects the firm's belief that super-sized leveraged buyouts are becoming endangered species. Particularly large take-privates. In fact, Bain began signaling such beliefs a couple years back, when it offered LPs the opportunity to cut their sidecar commitments in half.

At the time, Bain's sidecar kicked in when a deal's equity check passed the $600 million mark. This time around, it will be $400 million.  As in the past, Bain's own partners will make a substantial general partner commitment. Expect it to be around 10% of the total….

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