AnaCap Targets Financial Services Co.

AnaCap Financial Partners has reached a final close of its maiden private equity fund, AnaCap Financial Partners LP, with total commitments of €300 million. The fund size was raised to this level from the initial target of €250 million in order to accommodate a significant level of oversubscribed demand.

The fund was launched in Q3 2005 and will focus on the financial services sector, a space that few in the private equity world have targeted with funds such as Catalyst Fund Management & Research managing a first fund, but failing to get as far as a second fund, and the now defunct Schroder Finance Partners, which was run by Stewart Binnie out of London. Following Schroder Finance Partners’ closure Binnie was briefly involved in a financial services focused fund in Spain before joining Augustus Partners.

The fund will seek investment opportunities with high growth potential and/or restructuring needs in the financial services market. The core team of professionals has both operational and financial expertise in the financial services sector with specific emphasis on asset origination, operational development, and credit and liability management.

AnaCap was founded by Joe Giannamore, who was nominated U.K. entrepreneur of the year in 1999 for establishing Online Finance, an Internet lender that focused primarily on auto finance, and three other principals, two former senior executives of Online, Steve Barry, Peter Cartwright, and Finlay McFadyen, a former managing director of Terra Firma Capital Partners.

The fund was advised by Credit Suisse and was effectively raised and allocated by year-end. AnaCap was able to secure backing from private equity investors in Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East including Allianz, Goldman Sachs, Rothschild, Honeywell, Kodak, Westlake Investments Global and Adam Street Partners. —A.S.