Genstar Capital, a middle-market private equity firm focused on investments in targeted segments of the financial services, software, industrial technology, and healthcare industries, announced the final closing of Genstar Capital Partners VIII with $3.1 billion of limited partner capital commitments. In addition, Genstar has raised committed overage capacity of $650 million from select limited partners. The General Partner and affiliated entities are the largest investor in Fund VIII, with over $200 million of commitments. Total capital raised, including Fund VIII, the General Partner, affiliated entities, and the overage capacity is approximately $3.95 billion.
The General Partner will be led by the firm's Managing Directors - J. Ryan Clark, Jean-Pierre L. Conte, Rob S. Rutledge, Tony J. Salewski, and Eli P. Weiss.
Jean-Pierre Conte, Chairman and Managing Director, said, "As Genstar approaches its nearly 30-year mark of investing and transforming companies across all economic cycles, the new fund shows the market's affirmation of the firm's evolution to an institutionalized partnership that maintains its sector based and change capital investment approach. The combination of our outstanding group of professionals, differentiated investment strategy, healthy culture, and flat structure has proven to drive consistent returns. We thank all of our new and long term investors for their renewed confidence in us and helping us achieve this key milestone."
J. Ryan Clark, President and Managing Director, said, "Genstar has been incredibly active in a competitive private equity market, and we continue to evaluate many exciting middle market investment opportunities to include in our already strong portfolio of companies. With our new fund and overage capacity, we will be able to write investment checks over $600 million if needed, while still focusing on our sweet spot of deals requiring $100 million to $400 million of equity."
Over the past 12 months, Genstar has invested in eight new platform investments and realized strong returns from the sale of eight portfolio companies after successfully implementing strategies that enhanced their growth and scale, positioning them as industry leaders with future potential.
Commenting on the firm's fundraising success, Tony Salewski, Managing Director, said, "The success of this fundraise is a testament to our strong core of existing investors, as well as the addition of a select group of respected global institutional partners. This support allowed us to close the fund quickly, with a fund launch-to-close period of 10 weeks. We appreciate our investor support and plan to continue to deliver strong performance through backing management teams that drive transformational change in our portfolio, and building lasting companies."
The investor base represents leading global endowments and foundations, public and corporate pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, and family offices. Genstar closed its previous fund, Genstar Capital Partners VII, with approximately $2.1 billion of total committed capital, in 2015.
Genstar will continue to invest and take control positions in middle market companies headquartered in North America. Genstar has 19 members on its investment team operating from a single office in San Francisco. They are supported by a senior operations team and complemented by a group of 23 strategic advisors, who are current and former operating executives, working side by side with the Genstar investment team.
Evercore Partners served as Placement Agent for the fund, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP provided legal advice.