Genstar Capital has held a final closing of Genstar Capital Partners VIII with $3.1 billion of limited partner capital commitments. In addition, Genstar has raised committed overage capacity of $650 million from select limited partners. Fundraising was completed in just ten weeks.
The general partner and certain affiliate entities of the new fund are the largest investors with over $200 million of commitments. When all the math is done the total capital raised, including Fund VIII, the general partner, affiliated entities, and the overage capacity is approximately $3.95 billion. The firm’s earlier fund, Genstar Capital Partners VII closed in August 2015 with $2.1 billion in commitments.
“Genstar has been incredibly active in a competitive private equity market, and we continue to evaluate many exciting middle market investment opportunities to include in our already strong portfolio of companies,” said J. Ryan Clark, President and Managing Director. “With our new fund and overage capacity, we will be able to write investment checks over $600 million if needed, while still focusing on our sweet spot of deals requiring $100 million to $400 million of equity.”
Genstar has 19 members on its investment team operating from a single office in San Francisco. They are supported by a senior operations team and complemented by a group of 23 strategic advisors, who are current and former operating executives, working side by side with the Genstar investment team. Over the past 12 months, Genstar has invested in eight new platform investments and realized strong returns from the sale of eight portfolio companies. The firm, founded in 1988, targets investments in the financial services, software, industrial technology, and healthcare industries (www.gencap.com).
The general partner of the new fund will be led by the firm’s Managing Directors: J. Ryan Clark, Jean-Pierre Conte, Rob Rutledge, Tony Salewski, and Eli Weiss.
“As Genstar approaches its nearly 30-year mark of investing and transforming companies across all economic cycles, the new fund shows the market’s affirmation of the firm’s evolution to an institutionalized partnership that maintains its sector based and change capital investment approach,” said Jean-Pierre Conte, Chairman and Managing Director of Genstar. “The combination of our outstanding group of professionals, differentiated investment strategy, healthy culture, and flat structure has proven to drive consistent returns. We thank all of our new and long term investors for their renewed confidence in us and helping us achieve this key milestone.”
Evercore Partners (www.evercore.com) served as the fund’s placement agent and Weil, Gotshal & Manges (www.weil.com) provided legal services.
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | March 27, 2017