The 5-Year Return on Private-Equity Funds: 48%

What’s Happening

With Mitt Romney, former chief executive officer of Bain Capital, emerging as the leading Republican presidential candidate, private-equity firms have come under fire. At issue is whether the company restructurings in which such firms specialize are net job creators or job destroyers. What’s not in doubt is that such ventures can be lucrative. For the five years ended September 2011, private-equity funds returned 48 percent, or roughly 8 percent per year, according to research by Cambridge Associates. The S&P 500 index lost 6 percent, or roughly 1 percent annually, over the same period. That’s after fees, which typically amount to 2 percent of principal and 20 percent of profits.

Photograph by Alex Brandon/AP

Why It Matters

Such returns don’t come without risk, and investors must wait years for a payoff. It’s not uncommon for a private-equity investment to run, say, for five years before it plays out. And while the top-performing 25 percent of funds that made private-equity investments in 2008 have returned nearly 12 percent per year, the bottom quarter lost 6 percent. The hurdle to get into deals is high–to join a formal partnership requires a minimum investment that’s typically in the tens of millions. If you invest through a wealth-management company, the minimum can fall to to $500,000.

Graphic by Charlos Gary/Bloomberg

What It Means for Your Portfolio

For investors who don’t want to commit six figures, there are funds such as Powershares Global Listed Private Equity Portfolio and ALPS Red Rocks Listed Private Equity Fund. Publicly traded firms such as The Blackstone Group and KKR are a further option. Both stocks and index can be volatile. Over the same five-year period noted above, the S&P Listed Private Equity index lost about 10 percent of its value, largely due to the financial crisis. (The index fell by nearly 65 percent in the wake of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy; the S&P dropped 40 percent.) On the flip side, since the stock-market bottom in March 2009, the Listed Private Equity index has gained 160 percent–double the S&P 500′s performance.

Graphic by Charlos Gary/Bloomberg

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SEP and SSE Join Forces to Establish New £95 Million Green Energy Fund

LONDON and GLASGOW , January 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ –
- New secondaries fund acquires cleantech portfolio from SSE plc
Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) has raised a new £95 million fund to invest in innovative green energy businesses in a deal involving the acquisition of a portfolio of clean energy assets from SSE Ventures, the investment arm of FTSE 100 utilities company SSE plc.
SEP raised the new secondaries fund from four institutional investors, headed by Lexington Partners, the world’s largest independent manager of secondary private equity and co-investment funds with $20 billion under management.  The syndicate also comprises UK based investors, Hermes GPE and F&C Private Equity, as well as Swiss-based Partners Group.
The new Environmental Energies Fund (EEF) has acquired nine companies from the SSE Ventures portfolio and will operate as a partnership between SSE and the financial institutions, with SSE maintaining a significant interest in the portfolio through becoming an investor alongside the financial institutions.  SEP has formed a separate team to manage the fund headed by SEP partner Gary Le Sueur .
The fund’s portfolio companies are market leaders from across the European clean energy spectrum, including solar energy, ground source heat pumps, energy efficiency services, electricity grid management solutions, domestic water recycling and heat recovery, wave energy, small scale hydro-electric projects and low-carbon based community heating systems (see Notes to Editor for full details of the nine companies).
EEF will have substantial fresh capital available for investment in the portfolio and also has agreement to add up to a further five SSE investments to the portfolio in future.
This marks the first move into the secondary fund market for SEP, the UK’s leading growth equity and venture capital firm. It is SEP’s second significant recent fundraising, following the successful close of its new £200m SEP IV fund announced last week, bringing the total raised in recent months to £300 million.
SEP Managing Partner, Calum Paterson said:  “We are excited by the opportunity that this partnership with SSE brings and pleased to have secured such blue chip investor backing for the fund.  Energy-related technology investments have always been an area of strong interest for us and there will be synergies between our involvement with the new secondary fund and SEP’s standalone primary investment activity.”
SSE’s Finance Director, Gregor Alexander , said: “SEP has a strong track record in helping innovative companies grow and mature. By moving our cleantech investments into the Environmental Energies Fund we can ensure the companies are able to benefit from the track record and expertise of SEP, draw upon the financial resources of the new partners and ultimately deliver a better return on our initial investment”.
“We continue to believe that cleantech companies have an important role to play in developing new technologies and that is why we continue to be involved as a major partner in the EEF.”
Marshall Parke , Managing Partner in Lexington Partners’ London office, said:  “The clean energy sector is relatively new to the secondary market, and we expect to see more secondary activity in this space in the future.”  Pål Ristvedt, Partner, added: ”Selecting the right partners is absolutely critical to the success of these deals.  We believe the three way partnership between a major strategic player like SSE, the substantial energy and general investment expertise of SEP plus the secondary experience of Lexington Partners creates a very strong platform for managing these assets.”
Notes to Editors
About the Environmental Energies Fund:
The Environmental Energies Fund is a £95 million secondaries fund formed by SEP to acquire and invest in a portfolio of innovative UK based green energy businesses originally backed by SSE plc. The fund is managed by leading UK growth equity and venture capital firm SEP and will operate as a partnership between FTSE-100 listed SSE plc, one of the UK’s largest energy companies, and the fund’s blue-chip financial backers Lexington Partners, Hermes GPE, F&C Private Equity and Partners Group.
The fund’s portfolio of assets was acquired from SSE Ventures, the investment arm of SSE plc and comprise the following nine companies:
Anesco: http://anesco.co.uk
(Energy efficiency services and solutions)
Aquamarine Power: http://www.aquamarinepower.com
(Marine renewable power technology)
Cyberhawk Innovations: http://www.cyberhawkinnovations.co.uk
(Unmanned aerial inspection of energy installations)
Geothermal International: http://www.geothermalint.co.uk
(Turnkey services in ground and air source heat pumps)
Green Highland Renewables: http://www.greenhighland.co.uk
(Small and medium scale hydro-power schemes)
Smarter Grid Solutions: http://www.smartergridsolutions.com
(Electricity grid management technologies)
SolarCentury: http://www.solarcentury.co.uk
(Solar power design and installation)
Vital Energi: http://www.vitalenergi.co.uk
(Energy centre installation and services)
Waterevolution: http://www.waterevolution.co.uk
(Water recycling and heat recovery)
About Scottish Equity Partners
Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) is a leading independent, owner-managed growth equity and venture capital firm with a 20 year track record of successful investing. Operating from offices in Glasgow and London , it invests in innovative, high growth potential companies in the IT, healthcare and energy sectors.  With significant funds available and an integrated investment team, SEP has the resource and experience to add value from investment through to exit and has been selected as the partner of choice by many of the UK’s leading technology companies.
Recent portfolio exits include the sale of web traffic management company Zeus Technology to Riverbed Technology Inc (NASDAQ: RVBD – News) for a total price of up to $140m , recently named Best Venture Investment of the Year. SEP also sold multimedia home networking company Gigle Networks to Broadcom Corp (NASDAQ: BRCM – News).  SEP also exited from cancer therapy company BioVex which was acquired by Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN, SEHK: 4332) in a deal worth $1bn which earned SEP won the Venture Deal of the Year award in the Unquote British Private Equity Awards 2011.
SEP’s current portfolio comprises award-winning high growth companies including oil technology business Deep Casing Tools (http://www.deepcasingtools.com); energy-related technology specialist ARKeX (http://www.arkex.com); Media Ingenuity (http://www.mediaingenuity.com) a specialist in online marketing services and technology for the financial services sector; managed IT services provider Control Circle (http://www.controlcircle.com); flight search engine Skyscanner (http://www.skyscanner.net); wireless communications leader ipaccess (http://www.ipaccess.com);  IT analytics company Sumerian (http://www.sumerian.com/); Cmed (http://www.cmedgroup.com) which combines full clinical research services with advanced clinical data capture and management technology; and healthcare informatics company Aridhia (http://www.aridhia.com).
For more information visit http://www.sep.co.uk/

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