OceanSound hires former TCV, Blackstone IR exec Julie Marracino

OceanSound Partners, a Latino-led emerging manager in fundraising mode, hired Julie Marracino in the newly created role of principal of investor relations.

Marracino came onboard this month from TCV, where she was vice president of investor relations and capital formation, responsible for investment support, fundraising and client coverage for LPs across North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Before joining TCV in 2021, she performed similar work during her almost nine years at Blackstone. Most recently, she was a principal in the private equity giant’s institutional client services and investor relations group.

In the new job, Marracino will for the first time take the lead in an investor relations and fundraising operation.

“The OceanSound story is a compelling and differentiated one and there is no substitute for having an internal investor relations executive to tell that story to the marketplace,” managing partner Joe Benavides told Buyouts. “Especially someone with a wealth of experience at blue-chip firms.”

“Most young managers simply can’t do this,” he added.

A top priority for Marracino will be further development of the LP base, Benavides said. This will include providing greater “customer intimacy” as well as “expanding customer relationships.”

As such, Marracino’s hire – and the new position she occupies – represent an important step in the evolution of OceanSound and its strategy of control investing in technology and technology-enabled service companies focused on government and enterprise end-markets.

“I’m excited to help institutionalize and support the next stage of growth of OceanSound,” she told Buyouts.

OceanSound was launched in 2018. Its founding partners are Benavides, an ex-partner at Veritas Capital, Ted Coons, a former general partner at TCV, and Jeff Kelly, a one-time principal at HIG Capital.

A debut flagship buyout fund was closed two years ago. Billed as the largest Latino-led first-time vehicle on record – a reference to Benavides – it raised $780 million from LPs like Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System and Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois.

OceanSound is now back in the market with a second offering targeted to raise $1 billion, Buyouts reported last September, citing pension and Form D documents. Benavides and Marracino declined to comment.

Fund II will maintain the core strategy, doing six to eight platform deals involving US mid-market technology companies serving OceanSound’s target end-markets and requiring equity capital of $350 million or more.

The New York firm reports making seven platform and 30 add-on acquisitions. Among them is Kinective, a connectivity, workflow and analytics software provider to the banking sector. Formed last year with the merger of CFM, NXTsoft and IMM, it subsequently landed an investment from OceanSound and new backer TA Associates.

OceanSound Partners Fund I was earning a 1.53x net multiple and a 20.49 percent net IRR as of June 2023, according to Illinois Teachers’.