NJ’s Pastore Joins Vista; Says Will Raise 2014 Fund

Vista Equity, the biggest private equity firm in the enterprise software space, has started raising two new funds, one being a debt fund, Vista Debt Partners I LP and the other, Vista Foundation Fund II LP, a fund focused on small software firms. The debt fund is seeking to raise $600 million while the Foundation fund is seeking to raise $500 million.

Part of her role, she told Buyouts, will be to help identify investors “that are looking to commit across multiple product lines.” Vista Equity oversees $6 billion in private equity capital.

Until 2012, Pastore was the alternative investment chief at the $71 billion New Jersey Division of Investment, where she was instrumental in leading that system’s charge to expand alternative investments.

Under Pastore, New Jersey saw its alternatives cap grow to 35 percent from 25 percent, and she helped the system create a landmark $1.8 billion separate account with The Blackstone Group, a firm with whom she helped negotiate 1 percent management fees and 15 percent carry fees, rates that are substantially lower than those offered by most private equity firms.

She was with New Jersey from 2005 and had recently been promoted by Timothy Walsh, the chief investment officer, to be the system’s co-head of alternatives, a role that expanded her previous job as head of private equity. But at New Jersey, her boss was paid just $192,000 in 2011. Pastore emphasized that pay wasn’t the crucial factor in her decision, but her salary was likely to have been less than Walsh’s.

For the time being, Pastore said she will work from her home office in New Jersey and shuttle among Vista Equity’s offices in San Francisco, Austin, Tex. and Chicago for three weeks out of every four.

She said her new role, which she began in early March, should be very interesting “because she’s coming from other side of the table.” In approaching limited partners, she said, “I’ll be able to have more frank and honest conversations with them because I know how they feel and what they are going through every day. I know what their expectations are and understand where they are coming from.”

In 2012, Vista Equity closed its latest flagship fund, Vista Equity Partners IV LP, with $3.5 billion in commitments, $1 billion above the fund’s original target. Its earlier funds have performed extremely well. The vintage-2007 Fund III has achieved a net IRR of 34.4 percent and a net return multiple of 2.3x as of Sept. 2012, according to performance data from the Oregon Investment Council. Oregon committed $100 million to Fund III.

While Pastore will head the investor relations team, her hiring is actually the second IR appointment Vista Equity has made in recent months.  Earlier this year, the firm hired Jyoti Gupta away from the Texas Teachers’ Retirement System, where she was an investment manager.

(Correction: The original headline on this story incorrectly implied Pastore had left New Jersey to help raise Vista Equity’s 2014 fund. Pastore left the pension fund last year.)