Dying private equity firm tries for one more score.
Trimaran Capital Partners is a zombie private equity firm, which basically means that it doesn’t have any money to make new deals. But that doesn’t mean that its remaining staffers aren’t looking for another payday.
Fortune has learned that Trimaran has asked investors on its final fund — a $1 billion vehicle raised in 2000 — for an extension that would allow the firm to collect millions of dollars in management fees for the next several years. The deal also would, de facto, erase a clawback that Trimaran owes its investors for charging carried interest on specific deals, even though the broader fund has not met its minimum performance hurdles for such payments.
In exchange, the New York-based firm would continue to oversee its small handful of remaining investors and, theoretically, try to dispose of them via initial public offerings or trade sales.
Yes, this is just as scummy as it sounds. Trimaran wasn’t able to manage out its portfolio in the allotted amount of time, so now it’s asking not only for additional time, but for additional money. Oh, and let us keep the prior “profits” that we didn’t really earn.
Investors rejected an earlier extension proposal, and my guess is that they’ll scotch this one as well. The only problem, however, is what comes next.
Trimaran has threatened to simply distribute illiquid shares in Trimaran’s remaining portfolio companies, thus washing its hands of any future responsibility. Most of its investors don’t have experience handling such a distribution, and the whole lot of them would likely need to hire an outside administrator. One other option would be to just fire the general partner outright, but that too is a giant headache and ultimately requires another manager.
What complicates matters is that Trimaran originally spun out of CIBC, which retained a slice of the general partner and contributed around $600 million of the $1 billion fund. The bank does not get to vote as a limited partner – its commitment is in a separate account – but it does get a slice of carry (albeit no management fees). So if LPs were to turn down the new extension offer, that likely means CIBC would be on the hook for part of the clawback.
Trimaran did not respond to a request for comment.
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