Cinven Plans to Raise 8 Billion Euros for New Fund

(Bloomberg) -- Cinven is planning to raise a record pool of capital for its seventh buyout fund, people familiar with the matter said.

The European private equity firm could collect as much as 8 billion euros ($9.3 billion), said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The fundraising could start as soon as this year, the people said.

A representative for Cinven declined to comment.

The private equity market is raising record amounts of cash as investors are drawn to buyout firms’ stable returns. The industry, including real estate, debt and venture funds, is sitting on about $1.3 trillion in uninvested capital, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Cinven isn’t the only firm looking to set a record. Permira, which will begin fundraising next year, has held early stage discussions with investors to raise as much as 10 billion euros, its largest pool since the financial crisis, people familiar with the matter said in June. Billionaire George Soros’s family office is spinning out its private equity team and will pledge up to $2 billion to the group, which already oversees about $2 billion.

Cinven has invested or committed about 70 percent of the 7 billion euros it got in 2016 for its sixth fund, which it raised in four months, one of the people said. The firm has made six investments in the last six months, including buying Axa SA’s unit that distributes retirement products and an acquisition of cargo container firm Envirotainer.

Investors in Cinven’s fifth fund, a 5 billion-euro pool that was raised in 2013 and has finished investing, have made 1.4 times their initial investment so far, one of the people said. Some of Cinven’s exits in the past several years include the sale of U.K. life insurance consolidation business Guardian Financial Services at a return of about four times its initial investment, and the sale of its holding in French telecoms group Numericable-SFR at almost five times what it put in.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Syed in London at ssyed35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dinesh Nair at dnair5@bloomberg.net, Amy Thomson, Chitra Somayaji

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