Wellington Financial Announces 2nd Closing for Fund IV

I thought our modest but loyal blog readership should be the first to know.

We held our 2nd closing for Wellington Financial Fund IV on December 31st. We added two new LPs: a Canadian pension plan and a Family Office. We’ve now closed $190 million of total LP re-circulating equity commitments for Fund IV, up from Fund III’s $150 million (2006 vintage); our “hard cap” is $200 million on this one. The new fund gives us about $600 million of deal firepower over the next eight years. The formal press release won’t be out until the morning, so if you wouldn’t mind keeping it a secret until then:

Toronto, ON and Santa Monica, CA (January 14, 2013) – Wellington Financial LP, a privately-held specialty finance firm providing growth capital to U.S. and Canadian-based companies, announced today the second closing of Wellington Financial Fund IV.

Wellington’s 2006-vintage Fund III was capitalized with $150 million of re-circulating institutional equity commitments. That fund led over $300 million of financings via 52 loans over its life. Fund III limited partners earned a profit in every fiscal quarter during that six- year period, enjoying a GAAP internal rate of return in excess of 9.0%, net of all fees and expenses. On September 5, 2012, Wellington announced that the first close of Fund IV had attracted $177.5 million of re-circulating equity commitments from leading Canadian institutional investors, pension plans and family offices.

The new Fund IV has now raised $190 million of re-circulating equity via the addition of both a new institution and family office. “Our firm received tremendous support from the institutional limited partner universe in 2012,” said Mark McQueen, Wellington Financial’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “We led $78 million of transactions last year, a majority of which were for U.S.-based, venture capital-backed innovation companies. Since we began doing business in the U.S. in late 2009, our capital has helped American entrepreneurs preserve and/or create more than 3,700 U.S. jobs.”

Portfolio company exits in 2012 included BelAir Networks (acquired by Ericsson), Clairmail (acquired by Monitise plc), Ember (acquired by Silicon Labs) and Pivot (acquired by CME Group).

“Wellington’s impressive track record speaks to the market opportunity that we satisfy as well as the consistently attractive returns earned by our LPs over the past 12 consecutive years across three different funds,” added Ken Rotman, Wellington’s Chairman.

Wellington Financial LP has earned its LPs top quartile 3-, 5- and 10-year absolute and risk-adjusted returns since the firm’s inception in 2000. Fund IV will continue to follow the same proven business model by financing private and public companies with a demonstrated customer following, talented management, proven growth opportunities and committed institutional investors.

MRM