New Mountain Capital, a growth-oriented alternative investment firm headquartered in New York, closed $1.2 billion for its second non-control private equity fund, New Mountain Strategic Equity Fund II, and its related vehicles.
Investor demand for SEF II exceeded the fund’s “hard cap” amount of $1 billion, and limited partners supported relief from the “hard cap” to accommodate the additional commitments. In addition, general partner commitments totaled over $150 million, representing the largest investor in the fund and significant GP/LP alignment.
Investors in SEF II include pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, endowments, family offices, RIAs and high-net-worth individuals, among others. The majority of SEF I investors returned as investors for SEF II.
“We thank our Limited Partners for their friendship and support,” Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of New Mountain, said. “Since our founding 25 years ago, New Mountain has sought to consistently ‘build great businesses’ in carefully chosen acyclical defensive growth sectors. We are proud of the firm and team we have built, as we seek to improve businesses across market cycles as both a control and non-control shareholder.”
SEF II intends to continue to pursue New Mountain’s long-standing strategy emphasizing non-cyclical growth and business building for companies in carefully chosen “defensive growth” industries. It seeks to combine financial skills with operational and strategic skills at every step of the process and primarily invests in middle market businesses.
Specific areas of focus for the firm, and SEF II, include infrastructure services, life sciences and advanced materials, healthcare technologies, advanced data and analytics, software, financial and insurance services, technology enabled business services and others. SEF II intends to invest in these areas via minority, non-control transactions and add value, providing operational and other support.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett serves as legal advisor for the fund.
