West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced today that it has raised its fifth dedicated private equity secondaries fund, GS Vintage Fund V, with approximately $5.5 billion in capital commitments.

GS Vintage Fund V will focus primarily on acquiring portfolios of private equity assets, including limited partnership interests in private equity funds, as well as providing unique liquidity and capital solutions to both limited partners and general partners around the world.

The GS Vintage Funds evaluate opportunities ranging from $1 million to over $1 billion in size, across all private equity strategies and geographies. As one of the largest investors in the secondary market for private equity, the GS Vintage Funds draw on Goldman Sachs’ global sourcing network, due diligence capabilities, risk management expertise, and extensive private equity relationships.

GS Vintage Fund V is the latest fund raised by the Alternative Investments & Manager Selection (AIMS) Group of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. With more than 200 professionals worldwide, the AIMS Group provides investors diversified and customized portfolio solutions, across traditional long-only managers, hedge funds, and private equity funds around the world. To date, the private equity strategies of the AIMS Group represent more than $32 billion of capital commitments across private equity fund-of-funds, secondary market funds and co-investment vehicles.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management is the asset management arm of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS), which manages $779 billion as of November 28, 2008. Goldman Sachs Asset Management has been providing discretionary investment advisory services since 1989 and has investment professionals in all major financial centers around the world. The company offers investment strategies across a broad range of asset classes to institutional and individual clients globally. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is a leading global financial services firm providing investment banking, securities and investment management services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high-net-worth individuals.

Editing by Alex Akesson

Tags: alternative investments, capital commitments, customized portfolio, equity assets, equity strategies, global financial services, global sourcing network, goldman sachs asset management, goldman-sachs, goldman-sachs-group, goldman-sachs-group-inc, investment advisory services, partnership interests, private equity fund, private equity fund of funds, private-equity-funds, risk management expertise, sachs group inc, vintage funds

NEW YORK, N.Y. – SecondMarket, the largest marketplace for illiquid assets, announced today that it has launched markets for mortgage-backed securities (MBS), whole loans, and collateralized debt obligations (CDO).  Through SecondMarket, buyers and sellers are able to trade these assets in a robust, centralized marketplace that provides transparency, price discovery and an extensive network of market participants.

“Today, the multi-trillion-dollar MBS, whole loans and CDO secondary markets are nearly frozen.  For the global economy to recover, it is critical to unfreeze these assets from the balance sheets of financial institutions around the world and restart the securitization markets,” said SecondMarket CEO Barry Silbert.  “The most effective solution lies in a time-tested model – an organized, independent secondary marketplace that provides transparency and price discovery.”

Through its online trading and auction platform, proprietary matching algorithm and deep network of relationships, SecondMarket has successfully established itself as a trusted marketplace for a variety of illiquid asset classes since its founding in 2004, including auction-rate securities, bankruptcy claims, limited partnership interests, and restricted securities and blocks in small capitalization companies.

SecondMarket’s trading network includes 2,500 buyers and sellers, hundreds of whom have already expressed an interest in purchasing residential and commercial MBS, CDOs, and portfolios of various whole loans, including residential, commercial, construction, consumer and industrial loans.  To date, more than $1 billion in illiquid assets have already been traded over SecondMarket.

Due to the esoteric and opaque nature of many of these assets, pricing is extremely difficult.  In an effort to improve investors’ abilities to determine the value of these assets, SecondMarket is providing unparalleled transparency by aggregating data on MBS, whole loans and CDOs and offering it for free to SecondMarket participants.  SecondMarket also has established a network of third-party service providers – the SecondMarket Ecosystem – to offer valuation, research, data, analytics, legal and transaction advisory services.

Bill Seidman, former chairman of the FDIC and Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and advisor to SecondMarket, endorsed the SecondMarket model.  “When we were working with troubled bank assets during the S&L crisis, we were forced to do a lot of work to create a market for these assets,” said Seidman.  “Had there been a SecondMarket when I was at the RTC, I would have jumped at using their platform.”

The SecondMarket online marketplace and auction platform is expected to serve as a complementary market to assist the efforts being undertaken to address the legacy asset problem by governments in the U.S. and abroad.  “We applaud the federal government’s initial efforts to address the legacy assets and restart the securitization markets,” Silbert said, “and an independent, active secondary marketplace is essential to bolster those efforts.”   

SecondMarket is also pleased to announce that it has hired two former Credit Suisse directors to lead its efforts in these asset classes.  Elton Wells, previously a Director with Credit Suisse in their Structured Products Group, will head SecondMarket’s MBS and whole loans markets and Adrian Radulescu, formerly a Director with Credit Suisse and Head of the European Leveraged Finance CDO Structuring Desk in London, will head SecondMarket’s CDO market.

“Over the past six months, SecondMarket has been diligently and expeditiously preparing for the launch of these markets by hiring dozens of employees, expanding our technology capabilities and developing key industry relationships,” said Silbert.  “We are confident that our efforts will result in transparency, liquidity, a functioning secondary market for the so-called ‘legacy’ assets and, consequently, the restart of the securitization market.”

About SecondMarket

Founded in 2004, New York-based SecondMarket (member FINRA | MSRB | SIPC) is the world’s largest marketplace for illiquid assets, such as auction-rate securities, bankruptcy claims, collateralized debt obligations, residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, limited partnership interests, restricted securities and blocks in small capitalization companies, and whole loans.  SecondMarket has 2,500 participants, including global financial institutions, hedge funds, private equity firms, mutual funds, corporations and other institutional and accredited investors that collectively manage over $500 billion in assets available for investment.  For more information, visit www.SecondMarket.com.

Tags: asset-classes, auction platform, auction-rate, capitalization companies, cdos, centralized marketplace, collateralized-debt-obligations, global-economy, illiquid-assets, industrial loans, market participants, mortgage backed securities, partnership interests, price-discovery, restricted securities, s trading, secondary marketplace, secondary markets, securitization markets, silbert

Reuters Blogs – It seems that private equity fund sales are heating up so much they need their own market.

SecondMarket said today it is opening trading in limited partnership interests in private equity funds, venture capital funds, hedge funds and fund of funds (the intention to launch into this market was reported a few weeks ago by our sister publication peHUB).

The firm also hired Jeffrey Bollerman, previously at Citigroup Wealth Management, to help lead its LP interest market.

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Tags: citigroup, funds hedge, intention, limited partnership, partnership interests, private equity fund, private-equity-funds, reuters, sister publication, venture capital funds, wealth management