Unison holds $428m first close on Fund IV, eyes $714m

The fund was launched in February this year with a target of JPY60 billion. It is smaller than the 2008 vintage Unison Capital Partners III, which scaled back its corpus in 2012 from JPY140 billion to JPY107 billion after the firm reported limited deal flow.

According to a release, the new vehicle will pursue buyouts of small and mid-cap Japanese companies, including ownership successions, management buyouts, and spin-offs from large corporations. The fund will look to invest across numerous sectors, but with a particular focus on consumer-orientated businesses and upstream manufacturing.

"Japan has a very deep corporate market where good businesses change hands with relatively ease when compared with other Asian countries, but it still remains that the mega deals are harder to come by," Tatsuo Kawasaki, co-founder of Unison, told AVCJ in May. "We think the market is showing great momentum. The improvement in the macro economy is doing a lot for overall sentiment and that translates into the private equity environment well."

Unison is also raising its debut Korea fund, which it launched earlier this year. The fund is looking to raise KRW250 billion ($236 million). Set up in 1998, Unison Capital, has invested in 21 portfolio companies with a cumulative enterprise value of JPY600 billion.

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Fundraising
• Buyout
• Japan
• Unison Capital
• Fundraising
• buyout