Baring Private Equity Asia (Baring Asia), on Tuesday, announced that it has raised nearly $1.52 billion to invest in Asian companies engaged in alternative energy, media, financial services, consumer and industrial sectors. Called the Baring Asia Private Equity Fund IV, it is the largest regional growth equity fund ever raised for Asia, the company said. The fund will target companies with enterprise values between $100 million and $500 million having operations in China, India, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and across Southeast Asia.
The fund, which had an original target of $1billion, was oversubscribed and hence raised its hardcap fund-raising limit to account for high investor demand. Baring Asia currently has $2.5 billion in assets under advisory. ?At a time when the highly-leveraged US and European buyouts are starting to show signs of stress, private equity funds focused on growth investing in Asia, a strategy which largely does not use financial leverage, are continuing to attract interest from around the world,? said Jean Eric Salata, the Hong Kong-based founding partner and CEO of Baring Asia, in a statement. Baring Private Equity Asia has been consistently increasing its corpus for private equity investing in Asia. It?s earlier fund of $490 million (The Baring Asia Private Equity Fund III) was closed in 2006, was almost twice the size of its predecessor Fund II 2002.
Existing investors, who have re-invested in Baring Asia IV, include the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, Pantheon and Global Investment House. New investors include the Ontario Municpal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) and Partners Group.