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Where there is innovation in the field of alternative investments, you will find Paul Capital Partners. As one of the earliest developers of the secondary market, Paul Capital launched a business of providing creative liquidity solutions to investors in private equity limited partnership interests and portfolios of direct shareholdings.
Founder Philip Paul likes to say that he was “in the right place at the right time” when he was given the opportunity to acquire 42 venture capital and leveraged buyout fund positions from The Hillman Company in 1991. According to Venture magazine, the Hillmans, like the Rockefeller and Whitney families, were amongst the earliest investors in private equity and sponsors of many of today’s most successful private equity firms. At one point, the Hillmans were the largest source of private equity in the U.S.
During the 1980’s, Mr. Paul served as Chairman and CEO of Hillman Ventures, Inc., and was responsible for continuing a tradition of providing equity funds to the best general partners.
In 1990, as a part of an estate planning process, the Hillman family decided to implement an orderly liquidation of various illiquid assets, including real estate, private equity holdings and wholly owned operating businesses. Mr. Paul formed Paul Capital Partners in 1991 to participate in this — obtaining funding for his large transaction from the pension trusts of DuPont, AT&T and Hughes Aircraft Corp., as well as BancBoston and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Prior to 1990, there really was no “secondary market” as the term has now come to be known. There were only occasional sales of single LP interests, usually between LPs in the same fund.
From this transaction, Paul Capital helped to institutionalize the nascent secondary market — conducting several successive transactions in a similar vein to the original Hillman transaction, and then forming our first blind pool of $202M in late 1995, to search out secondary purchase opportunities on a worldwide basis.
Paul Capital evolved further with the formation of new dedicated funds in 1999 and 2000: Top Tier I, a fund of funds, based on the firm’s long-standing relationships with the best performing venture capital funds, primarily in Silicon Valley — and Paul Capital Royalty Acquisition Fund, providing liquidity to the owners of healthcare royalty interests.
We have also expanded beyond the traditional secondary market by acquiring GP interests in private equity firms, individual private equity interests and unfunded private equity commitments.
The team has grown from an initial two, to over 60 employees, with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Toronto.
Today we manage a total of more than $4 billion dollars across 13 investment funds — and Paul Capital remains at the forefront of innovation as we respond to the needs of the private equity community with unique and flexible means based on our considerable alternative investment experience.
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