Seidler raises another $250M

Seidler Equity Partners closed Seidler Equity Partners III late last month, raising $250 million in commitments. The fund was targeted at $200 million. Fund II raised $120 million in 2004 and is fully invested.

The Los Angeles-based private equity firm went largely to its existing LP base to raise fund II, with every investors from the previous fund re-upping. Existing LPs also introduced Seidler to a handful of new limiteds. “We did not cast as wide a net for the amount we were looking to raise, since we had all of our existing LPs come back in and many for more significant dollar amounts,” says spokesman Chris Eastland, who joined the firm in 2004.

The third fund will invest in lower middle-market transactions across industries in the United States and Canada. Seidler began fund-raising in late 2005.

Recent investments in the firm’s portfolio include orthopedics instruments maker Paragon Medical Inc. and specialty distributor Windy City Wire & Cable Technologies. The firm has also invested in several companies that provide yellow page directories, including Paradise Media Group, an independent publisher of telephone directories in Hawaii; Phone Directories Co., one of the nation’s largest directories companies and in over 100 markets; and Chinese Yellow Pages, a publisher of directories in Northern California.

Peter Seidler and his brother Robert Seidler founded the firm with Eric Kutsenda in 2000. The firm looks for target companies with revenue of between $15 million and $200 million and EBITDA of between $4 million and $30 million.