Vintage raises $144m for latest fund

Vintage Investment Partners has closed its third fund of funds on $144 million, above its $100 million target, a statement from the firm said.

Vintage Investments II held a first close on $100 million in August. Funding for the vehicle was mainly secured from American, Canadian and Israeli financial institutions, endowments, foundations and family offices. About 80 percent of the limited partners are existing investors, Vintage founder and managing partner Alan Feld said.

Fund VII will make investments of between $5 million and $10 million in venture capital funds in the US, Europe and Israel and in technology-related private equity funds in Israel, as well as buying low-funded secondaries and early secondaries positions in these types of funds.

The fund has already made four undisclosed commitments, Feld said. Vintage is likely to spend two to three years investing the fund in up to 15 core managers.

Vintage has previously made a small number of investments outside Israel with earlier funds, but this is the firm’s first internationally-targeted fund of funds. “The difference here is [that] over 50 percent of the money will be going into the US and Europe,” Feld said. “We continue to deploy a substantial amount of money in Israel, it’s just now that we’ve jumped from a $92 million fund to a $144 million fund it was natural to take a significant part of that coverage and deploy it outside,” Feld said.

Feld also said around 75 percent of the capital put into companies in the Israeli market is made by non-Israeli venture funds with which the Vintage team has become well-acquainted.

“It was natural, then, as we started to get to know those funds and their investments in Israel, we got to know their investments abroad,” Feld said. “Once we started to study their investments abroad, we got to meet other funds and build our database of European and US funds generally.”

Feld said Vintage has been working “for a good five years” to build up a database to the point where “we have a fairly good idea of where we want to deploy”.

The last fund Vintage closed was a technology-focused venture fund. Vintage Investments VI raised $161 million in June 2013. Since inception the firm has closed three secondary funds, a late-stage venture co-investment fund and two previous funds of funds, according to PEI’s Research and Analytics division.