Advantage Partners may extend investment deadline

The firm's fourth fund was launched in December 2006, when the market experienced a buyout boom. While the fund is due to mature in 2017, close to one-fifth of its capital is still unspent.

Hideyuki Inokuma, chief administrative officer of the company, told Reuters on Monday that the buyout firm had told investors last November the option of a deadline extension.

"We began thinking about extending the investment period in the second half of last year as we did not see much in the way of potential investment opportunities," Inokuma said, adding that the buyout firm will not make a decision before the end of April as the investment environment has been improving recently.

Advantage Partners is not the only buyout firm which has struggled with depressing dealflow. Unison Capital, for example, reportedly cut the size of its third fund by a quarter to JPY107 billion as it expected the market to remain slow. Carlyle also extended the investment period of its Japan designated fund by one year, as well as cutting its size by around a quarter.

Inokuma added that the tighter global regulations have also impacted fundraising. Even if the time limit for the fourth fund runs out in June, in the short term the company would rather form special investment vehicles when opportunities arise than launch a new fund .

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Buyout
• Investments
• buyout
• Advantage Partners
• Unison Capital
• The Carlyle Group
• Japan