New Mountain Capital has closed its latest direct lending fund, New Mountain Guardian III BDC LLC, with an above-target $1.15 billion of capital commitments. Including expected leverage, the new fund will have investable capital of $2.0 billion.
Guardian III’s capital includes a substantial investment from its general partner and employees of New Mountain Capital and includes a range of institutional limited partners.
As of the end of September, Guardian III has invested $1.1 billion into 79 portfolio companies across a variety of non-cyclical industries including enterprise software, business services, healthcare services, and healthcare technology. These industries parallel the private equity investment strategy employed by New Mountain. Since 2008, New Mountain’s credit strategy has invested approximately $15 billion in capital.
Managing Directors Robert Hamwee and John Kline are the co-portfolio managers of New Mountain’s private credit strategies.
“We believe that the current environment, where robust sponsor deal activity and strong overall credit conditions are coupled with continued uncertainty and volatility in certain sectors, is especially well-suited to our agile and selective approach to credit investing,” said Mr. Hamwee. “We look forward to working with leading sponsors and portfolio companies to support their growth while pursuing attractive and consistent returns.”
“We were very pleased to see the strong reception Guardian III received from who we believe to be some of the leading sophisticated and experienced investors,” added Mr. Kline. “Our ability to leverage the resources, investing experience, knowledge, and relationships of the entire New Mountain platform to help source and evaluate opportunities is a true differentiator, and we are excited to utilize that capability for the benefit of all of our stakeholders.”
New Mountain is an industry generalist and invests between $100 million and $500 million per transaction in companies with enterprise values typically between $100 million and $1 billion. The firm, founded in 2000 and headquartered in New York City, has 175 investment professionals and staff and now manages over $35 billion in aggregate assets in private equity, credit, net lease real estate and public equity funds.
“We would like to thank our investors for their strong support,” concluded Steve Klinsky, the founder and CEO of New Mountain Capital. “We believe New Mountain’s investment philosophy of focusing on defensive growth industries where we have deep expertise continues to be a successful strategy for our credit business and proven to be a key differentiator.”
In January 2021, New Mountain closed two private equity funds with $10.2 billion in total capital commitments. The two funds include its flagship fund, New Mountain Partners VI LP, with $9.6 billion of capital, and the firm’s first non-control private equity fund, Strategic Equity Fund I LP, with $640 million of capital.
© 2021 Private Equity Professional | October 21, 2021
