Fundraising

Several private equity industry veterans, including a portfolio manager from Stanford University's endowment, are among the earliest submitters of comments about a proposed SEC rule to ban the interaction of public pensions and placement agents.

US House of Representatives has voted to pass a bill that would give the SEC and the Federal Reserve the power to regulate compensation at private firms with more than $1 billion in assets. The wording of the proposed law excludes most private equity firms, however.

US legislators want regulators to determine if certain structures encourage undue risk taking at finanical firms with more than $1bn in assets.

By manipulation of data sources and vintage year methodology, the vast majority of fund managers could place themselves in the coveted ‘top quartile’ performance category, a study has found.

The sovereign fund, which already owns a portion of Blackstone's management company, will reportedly pay $258m for new shares in the Hong Kong-based alternative investment firm.

PEI Asia asked some of the region’s leading private equity LPs to name their pick of the Asia Pacific region’s “first-time” funds. The results are the eight names listed on pages 16 and 17. While some of the people may be familiar, having already made their mark elsewhere in Asian private equity, the firms they run now are probably not – yet. They have had the toughest of challenges thrown at them, in the form of the economic downturn, but the expectation is that these eight firms will go on to establish themselves firmly in the bedrock of the Asian private equity industry. Reporting by Jenny Blinch, Siddharth Poddar and Yvette Choo

With $5.64bn in commitments, Global Infrastructure Partners is the largest independent first-time infrastructure fund ever organised. Three years after the firm’s launch, the bulk of the fund is yet to be invested, and with markets still in disarray, new investments are difficult to close. But Adebayo Ogunlesi, the man in charge, isn’t in a hurry. Chris Josselyn and Philip Borel find out why.

The bank, which inherited the placement agent business following its merger with Merrill Lynch, will use a smaller team to manage its current clients, but will not take on any new clients.

In a ‘sign of the times’ PEI’s second annual Private Equity Leader award has gone to Jeremy Coller, whose firm manages one of the largest pools of capital in the secondaries market.

For many months before the US became gripped by the unfolding scandal involving disreputable fundraising go-betweens, the most reputable placement agents have been working to adapt their model. Here, PERE takes a look at the wider issues affecting the industry. PERE June 2009