Philly Firm Seeks Placement Agent For Fourth Fund

Milestone Partners is currently interviewing placement agents to help it raise its fourth fund, a source close to the firm’s plans told Buyouts.

Executives at the Radnor, Pa.-based shop are thinking of targeting $350 million, and as much as $450 million, this source said.

If successful, fund IV would mark a steady and fairly remarkable increase in fund size for Milestone, which buys lower mid-market companies. The firm is currently finishing up investing a $240 million fund. Before that, Milestone invested from a $120 million fund and a $36 million fund, respectively.

The firm recently added some heft to its staff, which could encourage prospective investors.

Milestone hired Ric Andersen, a former managing director at Silver Lake Partners, the technology-focused firm currently investing from a $9.3 billion fund, for which he helped establish an operations team focused on helping to manage portfolio companies. Prior to Silver Lake, Andersen spent 25 years as a consultant with PwC Consulting and IBM. Andersen also will focus on portfolio company operations at Milestone, while also taking a larger role on new investments and other firm business.

Milestone typically invests around $5 million to $40 million in deals sized between $15 million and $150 million.

In a recent interview with Buyouts, Andersen said the firm is seeing a lot of opportunities in infrastructure-type businesses, basic manufacturing, specialty pharmaceuticals and in retail and consumer products.

Scott Warren, a former managing director at Philadelphia First Group and Beacon Capital; and Robert Levine, a former investment banker with Lehman Brothers Holdings and Legg Mason Wood Walker, co-founded Milestone Partners in 1995. Levine is now a senior adviser to the firm, while Warren and John Shoemaker, who joined the firm in 2002, are managing partners.