Need To Sell?

Towne Holdings Inc. is among a few aging investments that Charterhouse Group Inc. might want to exit if it hopes to raise another fund.

Towne is a South Bend, Ind.-based provider of air cargo ground transportation and logistics management services doing business as Towne Air Freight. Founded in 1963, the company operates nationally, with terminals in Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, El Paso and Boston, among others. A 2010 report in the South Bend Tribune said that Towne employed nearly 300 at that time.

Much of that expansion has taken place under Charterhouse Group.

Charterhouse Group bought the company in 2005 for $80 million from William Blair Capital Partners LLC, according to Capital IQ. The company has since completed at least four add-on transactions. The most recent was in November 2010, when it bought HBI Freight, a Dulles, Va.-based air cargo and home delivery trucking company that employed about 200 at the time of the deal.

Charterhouse Group has a couple of other portfolio companies that would appear ripe for exiting when looking at the length of the investment. These include Charter Baking, a Boulder, Colo.-based parent company of several organic baked goods companies, a 2005 investment; and  Suddenlink Communications, a St. Louis, Mo.-based operator of cable broadband systems that the firm acquired in 2006.

The buyout shop could likely use the exits if it hopes to raise its fifth fund. Buyouts and other publications reported back in early 2010 that the New York-based firm was gearing up to raise its fifth fund, seeking somewhere between $500 million to $600 million. But it’s unclear if that was ever launched or, if it was, if it ever closed. The firm raised $450 million for its fourth fund in 2004.

David Hoffman, a managing director with Charterhouse, was unavailable for comment.