Charlesbank Capital Partners is pleased to announce that it has completed fundraising for its latest flagship private equity fund, Charlesbank Equity Fund X, LP (“Fund X”), reaching the hard cap of $3.75 billion less than six months after launch. Concurrently, the firm also closed on an $800 million companion vehicle, Charlesbank Equity Fund X Overage Fund, which will enable Fund X to expand its opportunity set to include attractive investments requiring larger amounts of capital. Charlesbank’s previous flagship fund, Fund IX, closed on total commitments of $3.0 billion in 2017.
Founded in 1998, Charlesbank is a private investment firm with offices in Boston and New York. Led by a long-standing senior team, the firm will continue its established investment strategy of partnering with talented management to acquire and grow businesses. Over its 22-year history, Charlesbank’s flagship private equity team has invested $7.3 billion in 71 companies. The Fund will maintain its focus on investments across five core sectors: business services, consumer, healthcare, industrial and technology. Fund X will target investments in middle-market companies with enterprise values ranging from $150 million to $3 billion, with the flexibility to deploy up to $500 million per transaction.
Fund X saw strong support from Charlesbank’s existing investors, who represented 94% of the Fund’s commitments. The Fund X investor base comprises more than 150 institutional limited partners, including many of the world’s leading pension funds, endowments, foundations, family offices, asset management firms and financial institutions.
“While the market landscape is dynamic and ever-changing, we believe the ingredients for generating strong returns remain largely the same: rigorous discipline rooted in fundamentals, a consistent team united by a deeply ingrained culture of collaboration, and an agile and forward-thinking model driven by deep pattern recognition in our target sectors,” said Michael Choe, Charlesbank’s CEO and Managing Director. “We believe our investment approach is ideally suited to respond to the wide range of market conditions that we are likely to see over the next several years, and we are deeply grateful for the confidence our investors have placed in us to do so.”
Added Maggie Littlefield Sahlman, Head of Investor Relations at Charlesbank, “We are privileged to have the longstanding support of an exceptional group of investors. We thank all our limited partners for the flexibility with which they adapted to a remote fundraising process and for their continued partnership through this global pandemic.”
Since inception, Charlesbank has raised more than $15 billion of commitments across its three investment strategies. In addition to Fund X, Charlesbank is currently investing its second Credit Opportunities Fund, which held a final close in July 2020, with limited partner commitments in excess of the $700 million hard cap. The firm’s credit strategy has been fully integrated within the broader Charlesbank private equity sector teams since its 2016 inception. With more than $1 billion dedicated credit AUM, the team continues to actively deploy capital across a spectrum of attractive credit opportunities. Charlesbank also launched its Technology Opportunities strategy in 2019, with the inaugural fund oversubscribed and capitalized at $845 million in total commitments. The Technology Opportunities Fund applies the firm’s disciplined and repeatable investment approach and strong risk management to pursue meaningful value creation in the target-rich middle-market technology sector.
Goodwin Procter LLP served as outside fund counsel on Fund X.
This press release is not an offer or solicitation of an offer, or an invitation or inducement, to invest in any Charlesbank Capital Partners fund. No person may invest in any Charlesbank fund except in accordance with and subject to the terms of the applicable fund documentation and applicable law.
About Charlesbank Capital Partners
Based in Boston and New York, Charlesbank Capital Partners is a middle-market private investment firm managing more than $8 billion of capital. Charlesbank focuses on management-led buyouts and growth capital financings, and also engages in opportunistic credit and technology investments. The firm seeks to build companies with sustainable competitive advantage and excellent prospects for growth. For more information, please visit www.charlesbank.com.