Spire Capital Partners has held a final closing of Spire Capital Partners III, LP (Spire III) with approximately $333 million in capital commitments. The committed capital to Spire III surpasses the firm’s earlier fund, Spire Capital Partners II, LP, which had $319 million of committed capital and was raised in 2007.
Spire III’s limited partners consist of existing Spire II investors as well as new investors such as pension funds, endowments, fund of funds, family offices, insurance companies, financial institutions and senior executives from the areas of Spire’s investment focus.
Spire III will make control investments in the business services, information services, media, education & education technology, and communications services sectors. Targeted companies will be based in the US and have enterprise values of between$30 million and $150 million.
Spire III has already invested in four companies: Lighthouse eDiscovery, a provider of software and services to enterprises and law firms for hosting, search, electronic storage and archiving of eDiscovery documents (www.lhediscovery.com); NetFortris, a provider of hosted cloud communications and other managed IT services to small and medium-sized business and enterprise customers (www.netfortris.com); Surgent Tax & Accounting Education, a provider of online content for professional education and career training in the accounting, auditing and taxation industries (www.cpenow.com); and Veraction, a provider of SaaS business software used for transportation spend management (www.veraction.com).
Spire Capital Partners invests from $15 million to $40 million in companies with revenues of at least $10 million and EBITDAs of $5 million. Sectors of interest include business services, information services, media, education and communications. Spire Capital was founded in 2000 and is led by partners Andy Armstrong, Bruce Hernandez, David Schaible and Sean White. The firm is based in New York with an additional office in West Conshohocken, PA (www.spirecapital.com).
Spire engaged Aqueduct Capital Group as its placement agent for Spire III. Aqueduct Capital was founded in 2006 by Thomas Roupe and Frank Edwards and has offices in New York, Charlotte and Houston (www.aqueductcap.com).
© 2015 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 4-8-15
