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The Onex Corporation, a Toronto based private equity firm, today announced the closing of its latest private equity fund, which is the largest in its history.
The new fund, called Onex Partners IV, has succeeded in raising US$5.15 billion and also closing earlier than the company had thought likely as well. Then in addition, in a show of investor confidence, Onex actually went beyond its own expectations and managed to raise substantially more than the US$4.5 billion that it initially hoped to achieve.
Onex states that participants in the new fund include some of the largest public pension plans and sovereign wealth funds from around the world.
Gerry Schwartz, who founded the firm thirty years ago and is still today its Chairman and CEO said, “Our disciplined ownership approach of partnering with outstanding management teams to build great companies has served us well for three decades. We will continue to pursue this strategy with Onex Partners IV.”
About Onex
Alternative asset manager Onex Corporation of Toronto is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a current market capitalization of aboutUS$6.3 billion.
With offices in Toronto, New York and London Onex is one of the oldest and most successful private equity firms on the continent. Onex operates by acquiring and building high-quality businesses in partnership with talented management teams.
Onex’s businesses have assets of US$44 billion, generate annual revenues of US$33 billion and employ over 230, 000 people worldwide.
Over its thirty-year history, Onex claims it has generated a gross Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 28%, throughout the period, from its realized, its substantially realized and its publicly traded investments. With the launch of this new fund Onex now has a total of about US$21 billion of assets under management.
About Gerald Schwartz
Onex was founded in 1984 by its current CEO, Gerry Schwartz, who today is 72, and he has always used basic, but effective, principles of value creation and entrepreneurial management to progress its activities. He has been actively involved in most of Onex’s major acquisitions, growth strategies and subsequent divestitures creating liquidity for the firm.
Before establishing Onex in 1984, Gerald Schwartz was the co-founder and President of CanWest Capital. Before that he worked at a major Wall Street investment banking firm, Bear Stearns, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions. His previous business experience also includes a stint practicing corporate law in Canada.
Schwartz was born in Winnipeg, in 1941, and today still owns 19% of the shares of Onex. Forbes Magazine lists him as worth US$1.9 billion currently, on the regulation Forbes billionaires list.
Gerry Schwartz is married to Heather Resiman, who is the founder and CEO of Indigo Books and Music. The couple have four children, from previous marriages.
The Schwartzs are strong supporters of Israel, including establishing the Heseg Foundation to establish scholarships for IDF lone soldiers in Israel. The Foundation offers scholarships to successful applicants in order to pursue academic programmes after concluding their army service.
Onex will celebrate its 30th anniversary this year. When founded in 1984, we had a staff of three, $50 million from a small group of investors and a simple strategy to find fundamentally good businesses to own, improve and build. In those early days, Onex’ success hinged on the performance of just a small handful of businesses. Today, we span the globe with sales of $33 billion and 232, 000 employees. Through stock buy-backs and dividends we’ve returned far more than has been invested by both private and public investors, yet our capital base today is $5.8 billion. We also have the good fortune to be managing another $13.5 billion on behalf of limited partners from around the world through Onex Partners, ONCAP and Onex Credit Partners.
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