Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Onex Corp., two of
Canada's buyout titans, are slipping down the global scale of
private-equity fundraising, according to a new ranking from tracking
firm Private Equity Intelligence.
PEI tracks the amount of money firms have raised in the past five years
for buyouts, arguing that's the best yardstick for a firm's ability to
compete for transactions.
By that measure, Teachers Private Capital slid to 29th place in the
past year from 20th the year before, and Onex just slipped into the top
50 at number 49, down from 33 the prior year.
Onex is never going to play well in these rankings, because the firm's
principals, including founder Gerry Schwartz, say they aren't
interested in raising the kinds of mega funds that rivals such as
#1-ranked Carlyle Group create. Onex Partners III, the large-cap fund
that Onex is raising right now, is shooting for $4.5-billion of
capital, the firm said recently. By private equity standards, that's
downright petite.
"We think it's smart to keep the fund size reasonable," Mr. Schwartz
told the Globe and Mail in an interview last summer. "And if we need
more money we will raise another fund, rather
than having a much larger fund which would put some of the pressure on
us to just get money invested."
Teachers is also an odd duck in this flock, as it doesn't look to raise
outside capital, and instead deploys money from the overall Teachers
fund into private investments.
But what the rankings clearly show is that aside from Onex and Teachers
(and now the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's growing private
investment arm), Canada still is not a big player in the mega-buyout
game. The real money still flows to London and the northeast U.S., and
when private-equity snaps out of the doldrums, that's where the buyout
bids will come from.
- Post the first comment
- Back to the blog
Start the Conversation, Leave a Comment
This conversation is semi-moderated What is moderation? | How do I report a comment?
You must be logged-in to submit a comment — login now!
Not registered with globeandmail.com? Register now. It is quick and free.
close
Alert us about this comment
Please let us know if this reader’s comment breaks the editor's rules and is obscene, abusive, threatening, unlawful, harassing, defamatory, profane or racially offensive by selecting the appropriate option to describe the problem.
Do not use this to complain about comments that don’t break the rules, for example those comments that you disagree with or contain spelling errors or multiple postings.
