Apax Crawls Toward $10.5 Billion Target for Latest Buyout Fund

(Bloomberg) -- Apax Partners is inching toward its latest fund raising goal of $10.5 billion.

The private equity firm, which began raising in the second quarter of last year, has so far collected more than $9 billion for its 10th flagship fund, people with knowledge of the situation said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. It expects to reach its target next quarter, one of the people said.

A spokesperson for Apax declined to comment.

Apax is raising cash in a competitive environment, as rivals chase capital from yield-hungry investors with limits on the amounts they can allocate. This year, institutions would have already earmarked billions of cash ahead of CVC Capital Partners raising at least $20 billion for a record flagship fund and EQT AB raising a $15 billion buyout fund.

In the race for fresh capital, Apax is lagging some of its peers. Last year, Cinven took around four months to raise 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion) -- a record for the firm; Permira took just over five months to get even more than that; while Advent International took six months to raise $17.5 billion for its largest fund yet, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Apax raised $9 billion in 2016 for its ninth flagship fund, which delivered an internal rate of return of around 30%, according to one of the people familiar.

Founded more than 40 years ago, Apax typically invests in large companies across the technology, telecommunications, services, health care and consumer sectors.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sarah Syed in London at ssyed35@bloomberg.net;Benjamin Robertson in london at brobertson29@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dinesh Nair at dnair5@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke, Aaron Kirchfeld

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