News and Analysis

The Oregon Investment Council, which oversees several state trust funds, including the Oregon Public Employees’ Retirement Fund, could commit up to $2.2 billion this year to private equity, according to a person with knowledge of the system, sister news service peHUB reported.

Public and private pension funds boosted their allocations to private equity by hundreds of billions of dollars between 2005 and 2012, but remain well behind the deployment levels of family offices/endowments and sovereign wealth funds, according to a first-time joint study of 1,208 U.S. and UK pension funds by the London Business School’s Coller Institute and Adveq. 

Onex Corp.’s flagship buyout vehicle Onex Partners IV LP is expected to reach a rapid close at or near its $4.5 billion target by the middle of 2014, an LP familiar with the firm told Buyouts.

A white paper published this month by the Commonfund Institute concludes that buyout funds, venture funds, hedge funds and other pools of alternative investments have “in general, contributed significantly” to performance for endowments and foundations over the last 20 years, either by boosting returns or smoothing volatility. And the institute sees more of the same […]

Falcon Investment Advisors has taken in $909.7 million for the fourth in its family of mezzanine funds, handily beating its $850 million target.

Castanea Partners, a mid-market firm that backs companies with strong consumer brands, and which scored a roughly 8x return on make-up company Urban Decay, is out raising a fourth fund, according to two sources familiar with the effort.

Goldman Sachs is expecting to steer clients toward so-called “3 percent funds” as it takes aim at its large private equity business, with about $15 billion in assets on its balance sheet that come under Volcker Rule requirements.