Matt Levin

As the fundraising market dips, mega-firms may have all the more reason to seek permanent capital bases with a public float, writes Matt Levin.

The $160m fund is targeting small to middle market enterprises to plug the financing gap between microfinance and commercial banks.

The latest upper mid-market fund being raised by the South African investment bank is more than double the size of its 2005 predecessor.

The emerging markets specialist has invested $10m from its Central Asia fund in equipment leasing finance company Leasing Group. Launched last year, the fund has raised $60m of its $100m target.

The Oregon Investment Council has committed $100m to Riverstone/Carlyle Renewable & Alternative Energy Fund II and $200m to Alinda’s latest infrastructure vehicle.

The cleantech start-up’s second financing round, which includes an investment from Bill Gates’ wealth management firm, has pushed its total outside funding to more than $100m. Other investors include ARCH Venture, Venrock and the Wellcome Trust.

The publicly listed fund of funds is now trading at almost a 50 percent discount to NAV. In a statement, the fund says it is “hopeful” that a deal for Lehman’s asset management and alternatives units “will be made within a very short period of time”.

Confronting an increasingly overweighted private equity portfolio, CalPERS has made $920m in commitments to four private equity funds. Last week, fellow pension giant CalSTRS addressed the denominator effect while disclosing more than $1bn in fresh commitments.

HighView Investment Group, led by former BlackRock co-founder Ralph Schlosstein, has garnered $600m in commitments to target minority interests in independent alternative asset managers, including real estate.

Former Sun Life Financial Canada president Robert Astley will succeed longtime director Gail Cook-Bennett as head of the C$128bn Canadian pension's in-house investment arm.