Ex Marsh chair launches fund

Jeffrey Greenberg, the former chairman and CEO of Marsh & McLennan, has reportedly linked up with New York-based Venturion Capital to launch a new $1 billion (€832 million) private equity fund. Greenberg will be operating out of his new firm Aquiline Capital Partners for the joint venture.

Greenberg, the son of embattled former AIG head Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, resigned from Marsh & McLennan last October amid bid-rigging and price-fixing allegations leveled against the company by New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer. Marsh eventually settled those charges through paying $850 million as part of a settlement.

This won’t be Greenberg’s first foray into private equity. He had chaired Marsh & McLennan’s in-house buyout group MMC Capital from 1996 to 2002. (MMC has since spun out of Marsh, and is now the independently run Stone Point Capital.)

The combination of Greenberg’s history in the financial space, and Venturion Capital’s specialisation in the same sector would seem to hint that the new fund could have a similar focus.

Venturion Capital was founded in early 1998 by Smith Barney veterans Matthew Grayson, Geoffrey Kalish and Bruce MacFarlane. The firm added Mitchell Leidner to its managing director ranks in 2000, luring him over from the alternative asset management division of The Blackstone Group. 

If the fund is indeed financially focused, it will join a number of other similarly targeted vehicles. Equifin Capital Partners, another New York-based financial services specialist, is also out raising a $450 million fund. The firm, according to SEC documents, has closed on $99 million so far. Other financially focused private equity firms in the market include MD Sass Financial Strategies, Lovell Minnick Partners and others.

There was no word yet as to when the fundraising will begin, or if the $1 billion target represents a hard cap on the fund.

Calls to Venturion were not returned by press time.