Madison Dearborn - What's the Word?

Recently read that Madison Dearborn is targeting $3B for fund IX, significantly downsizing a fundraising that's already been delayed. Does anyone know what's going on behind the scenes with the firm? Is the downsize primarily driven by the unfavorable macro dynamics in fundraising or has MDP's performance also been lacking?

9 Comments
 

Know the firm very well. This is fairly apt. Essentially a coup against leadership who had been there for decades. Combine that with tough fundraising environment where midmarket is squeezed is leading to a significantly smaller fund.

 

Is the downsize primarily driven by the unfavorable macro dynamics in fundraising or has MDP's performance also been lacking?

Both

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Generalist UMM firms without some kind of edge generally struggle to raise funds (look at Onex or AmSec as other examples). MDP doesn't have a differentiable edge, would expect many more legacy UMM names to be in a similar boat unless they can rebrand. THL is trying, for example, with their whole rebrand, but we'll see how that goes. Want to note: this doesn't apply to all generalist MM/UMM names, just moreso noting that some of them have struggled to raise funds (Lindsay Golberg is a legacy generalist player for example and will probably be able to raise their new fund pretty quickly since they have top returns relative to the space). 

 

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