Steve Bills

A flurry of recent initial public offerings has paved the way for successful exits for the sponsors of the some of the biggest leveraged buyouts of the past decade, but the fate of the remaining handful of companies in private equity portfolios remains uncertain at best.

As it wraps up raising its 11th flagship fund, focused primarily on North American buyouts, Bain Capital LLC is turning its attention to its next European fund.

High Road Capital Partners, a New York-based buyout shop founded by a group of investing pros from The Riverside Company, has received a much warmer reception for its sophomore fund than it did for its predecessor.

Investors are becoming more comfortable with Sankaty Advisors’ approach to mid-market lending, Michael Ewald, managing director at Sankaty, told Buyouts after the firm closed its second dedicated fund at nearly $1.4 billion.

Bain Capital may well have had its finest moment in turning around the performance of its ninth fund, an $8 billion pool invested speedily during the pre-crisis days of late 2006 and 2007. The successor pool, whose investment period straddled the financial crisis, has been a more complex story to tell. But the buyout shop believes that investors will still end up multiplying their money two and a half times.

Bain Capital LLC stands to make more than 4x its invested capital when it completes the sale of insurance software maker Applied Systems Inc in a secondary sale to Hellman & Friedman LLC, a person with knowledge of the transaction told Buyouts.