Toby Mitchenall
Along with those of Stanford and British Columbia, Harvard University’s $37bn endowment has scored top marks for sustainable investment. Harvard's endowment, an active private equity LP, returned 8.6 percent for the fiscal year ended 30 June.
The global mid-market buyout group has upped its investments in buyout and infrastructure deals, despite a roughly 40 percent fall in the total value of its investments over the past five months. The firm’s realisations also slowed significantly.
The buyout giant has said ‘a number of market conditions’ caused its investment portfolio to lose $1.2bn in value in the first half of 2008, while the firm’s compensation costs for an expanding stable of employees grew by 80 percent.
As British bank Barclays snaps up Lehman’s core investment banking businesses, the fate of the bankrupt bank’s investment management division including its private equity and real estate portfolio has yet to be sealed.
The London- and Paris-based secondaries shop has closed its latest fund and is looking forward to the ‘attractive opportunity’ for the secondaries market caused by credit market dislocation.
Having completed the buyout of an €80m offshore marine parts supplier for its first fund, the Danish lower mid-market firm has widened its investor base for its second fund and already surpassed its €200m target.
The global buyout group is having a week of firsts, having closed what it says is the first industrially-focused, mid-market Japanese private equity fund raised by an international firm just a day after making its maiden investment in the Dominican Republic.
In a bid to consolidate the industry at the start of a ‘nuclear fuel cycle’, the US energy industry specialist has recruited two veterans of nuclear power to form Accord Nuclear Resources, a platform from which to build an integrated nuclear fuel supplier.
Gautam Bhandari, previously part of the bank’s investment banking division in New York, is moving to Mumbai to head up Morgan Stanley Infrastructure as it seeks to invest part of a $4bn global fund in India, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Creating a dedicated website explaining the firm’s approach to corporate responsibility is just another natural step in the evolution of a private equity firm, says Patrick Dunne, the global firm’s communications director.