Firm: CCMP Capital Advisors LLC
Fund: CCMP Capital Investors III LP
Target: $3.5 billion
Placement Agent: TBD, but likely Credit Suisse
The New York-based firm
The firm will seek to raise $3.5 billion, a slight uptick from the $3.4 billion fund it raised in 2006 but a fairly ambitious goal considering the difficulty of today’s fundraising market.
The fundraising will be all the tougher because former parent JPMorgan, which committed just under a quarter of the predecessor fund, cannot commit to Fund III from its own balance sheet because of the Volcker Rule in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. (However, it can channel money through funds of funds and other third-party asset management businesses.)
To help diversify its investor base, CCMP Capital in recent years has been cultivating relationships with sovereign wealth funds in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Middle East; a couple are already performing due diligence on backing the new fund, one source said. The firm will likely hire Credit Suisse to help it raise the fund.
Formerly known as
The firm is led by CEO Stephen Murray, who joined the firm in 1989 after working as a vice president in the mid-market lending division of Manufacturers Hanover; and Chairman Greg Brenneman, the former president and CEO of PwC Consulting. The firm has eight managing directors, including Jonathan Lynch, a managing director who joined the firm in 1992 from Prudential Securities, where he was a member of the mergers and acquisitions department; and Richard Zannino, who joined the firm in 2009 after serving as CEO of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
CCMP Capital has been fairly active as both a buyer and seller in 2011. In July, it took Francesca’s Holdings Corp. public. The retailer of apparel, jewelry and accessories raised $170 million after pricing its shares above the expected range. In August, it sold CareMore Medical Group Inc., a provider of managed health care plans the firm bought in 2006. In May it agreed to buy Medpace Inc., a provider of clinical research services for the pharmaceutical industry, for a reported $500 million.