Searchlight Targets $750M For Fund I

Searchlight Capital, the buyout firm founded by former executives from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Apollo Global Management, is raising $750 million for its first fund, sources told sister Web site peHub. The pool is fully subscribed, the sources said.

“They are oversubscribed at their current target and basically closed already,” one placement source said. News of the Searchlight fundraising was reported in May 2010 by the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper said then that Searchlight was marketing for a $500 million to $1 billion fund.

The story also said that the Lauder family would likely be an anchor investor in Fund I. Eric Zinterhofer, one of Searchlight’s cofounders and a firm partner, is married to Aerin Lauder, the cosmetics heiress. It’s unclear if the Lauder family is an investor.

Officials for Searchlight declined comment.

Zinterhofer is the former co-head of media and telecom at Apollo. He is also the chairman of Charter Communications. In 2010, Zinterhofer left Apollo to start Searchlight along with Oliver Haarmann, a KKR partner, and Erol Uzumeri, who led the private equity business at the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

New York and London-based Searchlight invests in media, communications, information & IT services, as well as business and financial services, according to the firm’s Web site.

(Luisa Beltran is a senior writer for peHub.)