Global private equity firm Bain Capital LLC has closed its new Asia-focused fund at $4.65 billion, a person with direct knowledge said on Tuesday, exceeding its target and adding to the region’s already record-high dry powder.
Bain Capital raised $4 billion from external investors, or limited partners, and $650 million from itself and related parties, the person said on condition of anonymity as the information is confidential.
The firm, which had targeted to raise $3.5 billion to $4 billion, declined to comment.
The fundraising comes at a time when Asia is flush with fresh capital. Since 2015, private-equity firms have raised $445 billion in new funds for the region, leading to a record of $336 billion in dry powder - money committed but not yet invested - as of December, according to data provider Preqin.
Bain’s new pan-Asia fund, its fourth and biggest to date, is still petite versus some of its global and regional peers.
Hillhouse Capital, an avid investor in China’s biggest technology firms, closed its latest fund at $10.6 billion in September. That is the largest in Asia, exceeding KKR & Co Inc’s Asia-focused buyout fund that closed at $9.3 billion June 2017.
Bain, which led the region’s biggest ever private-equity deal with the $18 billion purchase of Toshiba’s memory chip unit last year, typically invests in consumer, financial and business services, healthcare, industrials and technology sectors, according to a public investment memorandum of the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, one of the firm’s limited partners.
The firm’s third pan-Asia fund, which raised $3 billion in 2016, saw a 60.9 percent internal rate of return by end-June this year, according to the PSERS disclosure.
