LP Scorecard: Big Apple’s pension benefits from big funds

The 2003-vintage Blackstone Capital Partners IV LP lands at the head of the class with an IRR of 39.9 percent. Of the top 10, it also leads in cash-on-cash return, with a vigorous 2.3x or 131.4 percent. The 2001-vintage Apollo Investment Fund V LP takes second place in both IRR and cash-on-cash return with 38.7 percent, and 1.9x or 93.4 percent, respectively. In this issue’s scorecard we take a look at the NYCERS private equity portfolio and ranked active funds by IRR as of March 31. The accompanying table shows the top ten results (see next page). 

Including the Apollo and Blackstone funds, nine of the top 10 are vintage-2001 or later. Lincolnshire Management has two funds in the top 10, including the third-ranked Lincolnshire Equity Fund III LP. The higher of its two funds is a vintage-2004 and sports an IRR of 33.5 percent. Behind Lincolnshire, Vista Equity Partners Fund III LP, vintage 2007, ranks fourth with a 29.7 percent IRR; and the vintage-2008 Apollo Investment Fund VII LP comes in fifth, with a 27.1 percent IRR.

Overall, the NYCERS private equity portfolio consists of $7.3 billion in committed capital to over 136 active funds as of March 31. Of that total, sponsors have drawn down $5.8 billion and returned $3.9 billion. Since its inception in 1998, NYCERS’ PE portfolio has posted an IRR of 9.4 percent.