Saints Buys Portfolio, Closes On $100M

The Saints have come marching in again. March was a banner month for San Francisco’s Saints Capital, which agreed to buy the remaining Amerindo Internet Fund portfolio and announced a final close on its sixth direct secondary fund with $100 million.

The board of the Amerindo Internet Fund announced on March 22, that it agreed to sell its entire private investment portfolio to Saints Capital and New York-based secondary buyer Willowridge. The sale price is valued at approximately $7.7 million. Moreland Partners brokered the deal. New York-based Willowridge was founded in 1995 and has purchased positions in more than 170 funds. The firm mostly focuses on deals in the United States.

Kenneth Sawyer, managing director of Saints Capital, says that the quality of about 12 of the portfolio’s companies is what attracted Saints to the deal. Among the companies he says hold unique promise are Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet telephone service provider Tellme Networks, Milpitas, Calif.-based routing and switching service provider Force10 Networks and Fremont, Calif.-based enterprise storage provider 3PAR.

Saints and Willowridge have partnered previously on deals and Willowridge is a limited partner of Saints. Sawyer of Saints Capital declined to discuss how much of the financing was handled by each of the two buyers. Willowridge declined to comment on the deal, citing the fact that it hasn’t officially closed yet. Amerindo’s board stated that it expects the deal to be closed by the end of June. The defunct Amerindo Internet Fund portfolio is a bubble era casualty littered with defunct and bankrupt companies. Its founder and another former executive are awaiting trial for defrauding investors out of millions.

The day after Amerindo’s board announced the portfolio sale, Saints Capital announced it closed its sixth direct secondary fund, Saints Capital V, with $100 million. Saints now manages seven funds and about 60 investments.

According a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the fund had a goal or hard cap of $150 million. Sawyer says that the fund’s goal from its inception was $100 million and that the firm decided against raising more money.

The fund was officially organized last July. Limited partners in the fund include Adams Street, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec and HarbourVest Partners.

This fund is the third blind pool of capital raised by Saints. Its first fund, Saints Ventures, was a blind pool of capital, as was Saints Capital IV, which closed with more than $30 million. Saints Capital IV is now completely committed. The firm’s other funds have been funds raised often from larger secondary groups and limited partners. Previous LPs have often consisted of larger secondary groups such as HarbourVest, Thomas Weisel Partners and Willowridge.

Last year Saints raised a parallel fund called Saints Capital Avalon. The $50 million fund was used along with the Saints Capital IV fund to acquire large private equity stakes from a Japanese corporation, a U.S. pension fund and other sellers. Limited partners in the fund included Lexington Partners and Adams Street Partners. The Saints fund invested in the fund with the same terms as the other LPs and the Saints partners serve as the fund’s general partners.

Saints Capital also announced it named Emmanuel Roubinowitz as vice president and Leo de Luna as an associate with the firm. Roubinowitz formerly served as a secondary specialist with Fondinvest. De Luna is a former business development manager with Spansion, a division of AMD Flash. — M.S.