ECI Partners is delighted to announce the final closing for its tenth buyout fund, ECI 10, at the hard cap of £500m. ECI launched its latest fundraising in early April 2014 with a target fund size of £400m and closed at the hard cap of £500m five months later, having been significantly oversubscribed.
The Fund was raised predominantly from its existing institutional investors, who have contributed 80% of the capital, with an average increase on prior commitments of 33%. ECI is delighted to also welcome five new investors to this partnership. ECI 10 therefore comprises a total of 25 institutional investors from the UK, US, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. They include leading pension funds, fund of funds, insurance companies, endowments, family offices and sovereign wealth capital.
Founded as Equity Capital for Industry in 1976, ECI has now raised over £1.6bn of external capital since launch and is one of the UK’s longest-established private equity partnerships. This close also makes ECI the first private equity firm investing in UK-headquartered companies to raise a tenth buyout fund focused on the same strategy.
ECI 10 is a successor fund to ECI 9, a £437m fund which started investing in 2010, and will seek to employ the same investment strategy focused on growth buyouts with an enterprise value of between £10-150m.
