State Universities Retirement System of Illinois has committed $75m to AVP Partners’ fund of funds, marking the start of a new investment strategy in the sector.
Michael Sabia, the ex-CEO of BCE who worked on the failed take-private of the Canada telecoms company, has been appointed president of the C$120bn Canadian pension.
The secondaries advisor and placement agent has been approaching large investors about a vehicle that allows clients to 'share' capital calls with cash-strapped LPs.
A recent poll of institutional and private investors has revealed that a number of participants are scaling back their private equity commitments and planning to stay out of the market for the near term.
The $97bn pension, which has seen the value of its assets plunge by about $30bn since last summer, increased its upper limit allocation ceiling to the asset class to 7 percent from 5 percent in December to alleviate over-weighting.
Investor sentiment is on the decline as the region suffers from a decline in petro dollar surpluses coupled with the wider global economic turmoil.
The cleantech-focused DFJ affiliate has closed its second fund slightly shy of its $500m hard cap. The fund's first investment was made last year in Quench USA, the largest marketer and distributor of bottle-less water coolers in the US.
Fresh from raising nearly €1bn for its eighth mid-cap fund, the French private equity firm is aligning itself to take advantage of market dislocation. It is also raising its third small-cap fund.
The pension is committed to building its fledgling private equity portfolio and forecasts meeting its targeted 8% allocation to the asset class by 2013, with commitments totaling $3.8bn.
The listed Permira investor, which is now 20%-owned by Coller Capital, saw two-thirds of the book value wiped off its portfolio during 2008. Chief executive Andrew Williams has stepped down.