Onex Fundraising and Outlook

Bump

I don’t know them but rarely see them. Hearsay they don’t really deploy or try to deploy and it’s mostly asset mgmt and exit

Avoid, why join a sinking ship

When you ask someone in PE to give an example zombie fund, Onex is the first or one of the top three names that will pop-up. It's been almost 10 years since their last fundraise; unless these investments are clearing 4-5x MOIC's the IRR's are likely not very good in their exits. Getting DPI is important, but no LP wants sub 10-15% returns for a 10+ holding period when we have been on one of the greatest bull-runs in that same period.

One of my buddies works at Onex Partners in Toronto and they look a lot better than people think. They raised a smaller fund recently focused on their core verticals and heard that fund is crushing it. The zombie stuff is stale. New leadership and cutting some of their bad verticals has helped apparently. 

how could the smaller fund already be "crushing it"? Have they seen realizations

Apparently they've returned capital on the first two deals in the smaller fund (2024 vintage) within 18 months. if you look at the public company filings, that smaller fund was up 30%+ after a year. Time will tell but the past 24 months at least seem to have been positive for the Onex Partners business.

I know quite a few people on the inside. Onex saw a lot of churn in London and New York where the recruiting markets are better, while being stronger at retention in Toronto (where there aren’t really many good options). Best performers all left to top funds (Advent, Warburg, Apollo, CVC, Inflexion, HIG to name a few), quite a few people also got fired as the firm was downsizing following the fund VI failure in 2023/24. Those who remained are getting paid well but outlook remains dire.