Just happened

And the winners are…

On Friday we had the pleasure of announcing the winners of our annual reader-chosen awards. This year was more competitive than ever, with 72 categories across sectors as diverse as healthcare, energy and distressed debt to frontier markets, long-term holds and secondaries, as well as much more.

• TPG Rise Fund’s Bill McGlashan (pictured) was named Private Equity Game Changer of the Year. “Clearly every investment has an impact. The question is what is the degree of impact,” McGlashan told us.
• KKR, EQT and Blackstone dominated with wins across 10 categories, including North American Exit of the Year, Large-cap Firm of the Year in Europe and Firm of the Year in China.
• Secondaries had some upsets with underdogs taking the gong and first-time wins for firms including Deutsche spinout Glendower Capital for Firm of the Year in Europe and Singapore’s GIC in Asia. As expected, Coller Capital, Goldman Sachs and Campbell Lutyens won Secondaries Deal of the Year in EMEA for executing the biggest GP-led restructuring involving Nordic Capital’s 2008-vintage fund.
• Alaska Permanent Fund, whose PE team has been called “rock stars”, were named LP of the year in North America, while Stonehage Fleming and CPPIB stole the show in EMEA and Asia, respectively.

Growth gurus going large

Growth gurus go large. TA Associates, one of the oldest growth investing firms in the business, is plotting a jump in fund size of around 40 percent for its next vehicle, but has “both the skills and resources available to continue to produce strong returns for us,” says one investor. Details here, including how the firm operates without a hurdle rate.

In memoriam

Park Hill founder co-founder and CEO Dan Prendergast passed away last week. The veteran of Atlantic Pacific Capital, DLJ and Merrill Lynch helped grow Park Hill into a one of the dominant forces in global fund placement and secondary advisory. “Dan’s commitment to Park Hill was inspiring and his leadership was marked by integrity, kindness and humour,” wrote Paul Taubman, founder of Park Hill’s parent company PJT Partners, in a memo to colleagues.

Essentials

Back for more. After a successful process last year, Alaska Permanent Fund is again mulling a large secondaries sale in 2019 – this time of around $1 billion. The fund has yet to hire anyone, but Evercore advised last time around. Alaska is also working on its in-state $200 million private equity emerging manager programme and is seeking a fund of funds manager to run it on a discretionary basis.

LP meetings. It’s Monday, so here are some LP meetings to watch out for this week.

• 6 March – Employees Retirement System of Texas is holding a board meeting
• 7 March – Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York is holding an investment meeting; San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association, State Universities Retirement System of Illinois and Los Angeles Fire & Police Pension System are holding board meetings; Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System and Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana are holding committees and board meetings.

Dig Deeper

We’ve more than 6,700 institutions in our database, including TPG, EQT and Glendower Capital from today’s Side Letter.

He said it

“A mentor and friend to so many of us, Dan will be remembered as a visionary leader, innovative entrepreneur and dedicated colleague.”

Paul Taubman, founder of Park Hill’s parent company PJT Partners, remembers Dan Prendergast, co-founder of Park Hill, who died last week.

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