Near Record Pace of Private Equity Fund-Raising Hit Wall in September

Fund-raising by private equity firms slowed dramatically during the last three months of 2008, so much so, in fact, that an analysis shows an 18 percent overall decline among fund-raising by U.S. firms compared to 2007—all of it due to the Q4 meltdown.

An analysis published today in the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst newsletter found that 99 funds raised about $43 billion during the fourth quarter, a roughly 57 percent decline from the nearly $100 billion raised by 208 funds during the same period in 2007.

Fund-raising by private equity firms in 2008 had been running at a pace slightly ahead of the industry record set in 2007 until the fourth quarter—when fund-raising by private equity firms slowed to a virtual standstill. Based on statistics from the LP Source database, the analysis found that 363 U.S.-based private equity funds raised $265.6 billion in 2008—18 percent below the $325.8 billion raised by 506 funds in 2007. The analysis focused on private capital invested with venture capital firms, buyout and corporate finance funds, mezzanine funds, and secondary funds, also known as funds of funds. No hedge funds were included.

“While 2008 was still easily the second-best year on record, the decline we saw in the most recent quarter may steepen in the coming months,” newsletter managing editor Jennifer Rossa said in a statement. The economic crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in early September hit the buyout industry particularly hard, as fund-raising declined 26 percent to $181 billion raised among 143 buyout funds—a level comparable to 2006. At the nine-month mark, the buyout sector was down just 3 percent compared to 2007.

Overall venture capital fund-raising, which was up about 4 percent at the nine-month mark, fell by 25 percent for the year in 2008, with $24.7 billion raised across 150 funds nationwide. It was the lowest fund-raising total for the venture industry since 2004.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.