Silver Lake leads modest fund-raising activity

Fund-raising was not very active during the past week, as most of the activity was a result of two firms.

Silver Lake Partners closed its third general fund with $9.3 billion in capital commitments, having added $1.8 billion within the last week. The firm’s prior fund closed in 2004 with $3.6 billion, and the new one had a target of $7.5 billion and a hard cap of $10 billion. Silver Lake also is still in process of raising its first middle-market fund, which has already busted through its $750 million target.

Also, NGP Energy Capital Management held a final close on its Natural Gas Partners IX during the last week. The fund tops out at $4 billion in commitments. The Irving, Texas-based provider of financing and sponsorship to the energy industry raised $1.4 billion for fund IX in the first two months of the year.

So far in 2008, buyout and mezzanine firms have raised a combined $51 billion in funding.

Deals

During the past week, U.S.-based LBO shops completed 18 transactions. Five of those deals had disclosed amounts totaling $1.6 billion, according to Thomson Financial (publisher of PE Week). There were no billion-dollar deals and more than half of the period’s volume was from The Blackstone Group’s acquisition of GSO Capital Partners, a private equity firm, for $945 million.

The rest of the transactions with disclosed amounts were smaller deals with values ranging from slightly more than $24 million (for the purchase of Nichols Brothers Boat Builders Inc., a bankrupt manufacturer of steel and aluminum vessels) to $325 million (for NCO Group Inc.’s acquisition of Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a provider of business process outsourcing services.)

Disclosed deal volume year-to-date inched higher to just above $35 billion. —Eamon Beltran