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What We Do
Investment Programs
Targeted investment solutions
CF Private Equity has a 36-year track record1 of aiming to help investors achieve their investment goals with a focus on select private markets and diversification. Our tenured team partners with who we believe are industry-leading managers and prominent investors to create investment solutions that cover a broad range of global opportunities.
Buyouts and Growth Equity
Our programs are dynamically constructed portfolios including primaries, secondaries and co-investments. We build global programs as well as geographically focused programs across the U.S. and Europe & other international markets. The managers we select tend to operate in the small to middle market, where we believe there is often less competition and valuations may be more attractive. We seek to partner with managers that are capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access.2
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Global platform with local presence in U.S., Europe, and Asia
- Experienced team and investment committee
- Partner with smaller, geographic and sector specialist managers
- Disciplined investment process
Our Process
We seek to construct portfolios that include smaller, geographic and sector specialist managers with industry and operational expertise and have fund-size discipline. Programs typically employ low leverage and are highly diversified through a mix of primary commitments and capital-efficient secondaries and co-investments.
Key Themes
Each of our U.S. and European programs are built around three investment themes: 1) value-driven and operational private equity investments; 2) growth investments; 3) distressed, turnaround investments. We believe our managers are differentiated and highly involved operationally; many are sector-specific firms.
We do the legwork early to seek to identify and access future industry leaders that complement our relationships with established general partners.
$9
Billion Raised Since Inception3
Venture Capital
Our venture capital programs have a global, multi-stage and multi-sector approach. We seek to invest in and alongside venture capital managers across stages (with an early-stage bias and select venture growth equity exposure) through primary funds, direct investments in venture-backed companies, and through secondary transactions. Typically, focus sectors will include technology and software-enabled opportunities globally across enterprise, consumer, healthcare and blockchain. We seek to partner with managers that are capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access.2
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Deep, long-standing manager relationships and network ecosystem
- Global platform with local presence in U.S. and Europe
- Experienced team and investment committee
- Complementary investment strategies across primary, direct, and secondary venture investments
Our Process
We maintain a disciplined investment selection approach and focus on a limited set of venture capital managers and investments when constructing portfolios. Portfolios typically include a concentrated set of primary venture fund commitments, complemented by direct company investments and secondary transactions.
Key Themes
We view venture capital as more of an “access class” than an “asset class” where investing with industry leaders is a critical success factor. We believe disruptive innovation is agnostic to capital market cycles and focus largely on technology investments with an early-stage bias. We seek to capture value creation from profound technology innovation and the accelerated digital adoption of global consumers and enterprises. Innovation is global in nature, and our opportunity set is led by the U.S., Europe and Israel, India, and elsewhere on an opportunistic basis.
$7
Billion Raised Since Inception4
Venture Direct
Our venture direct program is designed to provide investors with a portfolio of select venture capital-backed private companies in the mid-to-late-stage. We leverage CF Private Equity’s extensive relationships with managers to help identify opportunities, and a majority of investments are often made alongside such managers. Many of these managers are generally capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access and limit who they partner with in co-investments.2
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Capitalize on pattern recognition and informational advantage from 30+ years investing in venture and 10+ years investing in venture direct opportunities9
- Established relationships with 60+ leading venture capital managers9
- Serve on 20+ venture advisory boards9
- Insight into 4,000+ portfolio companies9
- Ability to independently value and underwrite opportunities
- We seek clear value creation plans
- Knowledgeable and experienced management team
Our Process
We seek to identify and invest in mid-to-later stage, high growth companies, using disciplined investment criteria. We target technology and healthcare investment themes where we believe there are significant opportunities for disruption. Our programs allow access to select opportunities and leverage established industry relationships. Our aim is to curate a portfolio of category-defining companies through long-term manager partnerships.
Key Themes
We believe sectors such as enterprise software, healthcare, logistics/supply chain, frontier/deep tech and consumer tech offer compelling opportunities. From select companies within these sectors, we seek attractive growth rates, diversified customer bases, recurring revenues (such as subscription revenues), strong unit economics, breakeven or structurally cash flow positive profiles.
62+
Direct Investments Completed
Blockchain
Our blockchain program is designed with diversified multi-manager exposure to venture capital investments in the blockchain and digital assets space. We believe new technology platforms, like blockchain, create opportunities for new venture firms to form and we prefer long-term oriented blockchain specialist managers with verifiable track records and highly technical teams. We leverage our rich history as a venture investor to identify and partner with what we believe are capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access managers.2
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Capitalize on pattern recognition and informational knowledge from 30+ years investing in venture9
- Long tenured team among the first institutional blockchain investors
- Established relationships and access to blockchain specialist managers
- Prepared mind and deep due diligence process
Our Process
We seek to construct portfolios of high quality blockchain specialist managers and concentrate with those we believe to be industry leaders. Managers typically will have deeply technical teams and what we believe is a unique ability to understand the utility, pitfalls, economics, and risks associated with investing in blockchain specific projects. Our goal is to curate an early stage biased and diversified portfolio across asset types, vintages, geographies and structures.
Key Themes
We believe blockchain technologies are the underpinnings of a new financial and internet infrastructure with the power to disrupt multiple industries and that compelling opportunities exist across three areas: protocols, infrastructure and decentralized applications. Across those areas we seek exposure to high quality projects that function like operating businesses with demonstrated utility and avoid exposure to projects that may be purely speculative in nature.
13+
Blockchain Investments Completed since 2018
Sustainability
Our sustainability programs are designed to seek standalone private equity investment returns while intending to report on measurable environmental benefits. We focus on companies, operating platforms and other investments across a diversified set of sustainable themes such as: (a) renewable energy; (b) food, agriculture and water; and (c) resource efficiency.
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Dynamic, diversified portfolio construction
- Focus on compelling sectors and companies with reportable environmental benefits
- Potential for increased diversification when added to traditional portfolios
- Tenured team of investment professionals
Our Process
We analyze investments globally with a particular focus on North America, Europe and other developed markets. In addition to careful investment selection, it is CF Private Equity’s point of view that potential benefits can also be achieved by dynamic portfolio construction which may include direct investments, co-investments, investments in operating platforms as well as secondaries and strategic commitments to primary funds.
Key Themes
Our investment strategy focuses on three key themes - 1) renewable energy; 2) food, agriculture, and water; and 3) resource efficiency. Within renewable energy, we target opportunities at the late-stage development/pre-construction stage where we have some visibility into the projects’ underlying progress and underwrite those projects to proceed to NTP5 or operation. In the agricultural space, we target investments across the value chain – upstream, processing, distribution and downstream – where the investment thesis implies a level of operational value-add. Resource efficiency encompasses themes like energy efficiency, waste reduction, recycling and mobility. We typically seek growth equity to buyout entry positions in companies. These themes generally guide our portfolio structuring to seek diversification, with the aim of producing a wide spectrum of potential environmental benefits.
$338
Million Raised Since Inception6
Natural Resources
Our Natural Resources programs generally invest in energy, mining, power generation and other physical infrastructure, and agriculture as well as select services across these sectors. We believe exposure to these private natural resources sectors may provide potential diversification and inflation hedging benefits to a broader portfolio of publicly traded stocks and bonds.
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Dynamic, diversified portfolio construction
- Tenured team of investment professionals
- Exposure to globally diversified portfolio of private natural resources
- Potential for increased diversification when added to traditional portfolios
Our Process
We strive to capitalize on our investment knowledge base, industry contacts and historical relationships. Our portfolio construction approach seeks to diversify across various industries, stages of corporate development and styles of investment within the natural resources sector. We invest tactically via direct investments, co-investments, operating platforms, secondaries and select strategic primaries, all within our due diligence framework.
Key Themes
We believe that the following factors have the potential to drive investment opportunities in energy: first, the emergence of unconventional resources in North America and the world as an economic and viable source of energy; second, continued focus by many larger oil and gas companies on divestitures of non-core assets across the world; third, the tendency of management teams at smaller operating ventures to operate with low cost structures, allowing them to efficiently capitalize on opportunities; and fourth, a persistent cyclicality in the capital available from the public markets for small and medium-sized natural resources companies. Within power generation, renewable energy and broader physical infrastructure, we believe there remain inefficiencies in the private markets where specialist partners can seize on the dislocations while adding value through operational oversight. The agricultural sector is evolving to become more institutional, and we seek investments that may benefit from operational value-add. In some instances, these opportunities may include vertical integration. Within mining, we see the requirement of more meaningful investment towards increasing supply. When coupling this dynamic with surging demand for several metals and minerals critical to global growth and the energy transition, we see a compelling inflection point. We look to construct a diversified portfolio that targets a cross section of these themes.
$3.2
billion raised since inception7
Co-investments
Our co-investment program is designed to provide investors with a direct portfolio of select private companies. We leverage CF Private Equity’s extensive relationships with managers and investors to help identify opportunities. Many of these managers are often considered sector specialists and we seek to partner with managers that are capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access.2
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Seek a clear value creation plan
- Focus on limited downside risk
- Diversified among sectors and companies
- Access and alignment with controlling sponsor/management
- Knowledgeable and experienced management team
Our Process
We primarily seek to make investments in small or middle market leveraged buyout or growth equity opportunities. We build concentrated portfolios of unique companies across two or three vintage years. Investments are privately negotiated into companies that are either profitable or expected to become profitable before exit. Our process is geographically opportunistic with a tilt to more developed economies such as the U.S. and Europe.
Key Themes
Partnering with sponsors with sector expertise allows for active ownership. Direct investments in small or middle market private companies may provide diversification benefits to a more traditional portfolio of large and mega company buyouts. We actively seek diversification among resilient sectors and companies.
159+
Co-investments completed8
Secondaries
CF Private Equity is a long-time investor in the secondary market providing liquidity solutions to global private market investors through both Limited Partner-led and General Partner-led transactions. Our programs are designed to provide investors with a diversified portfolio of private investments across managers, strategies, regions, industries, vintage years, and portfolio companies. Based on bottom-up analysis, we seek to identify high quality assets and take an opportunistic approach to finding investments that may be purchased at discounts to intrinsic value. We also capitalize on CF Private Equity’s advisory board seats and extensive network of manager and secondary industry relationships to seek to gain an access and knowledge advantage.
The CF Private Equity Advantage
- Access and knowledge
- Differentiated deal sourcing
- Small LP-Led Transactions
- Invested in over 1,200 funds9
- Participation in 275 fund advisory boards through 120 managers10
Our Process
Our opportunistic approach targets value and inefficiency across investment strategies. We believe that our focus on smaller transactions, which are often less competitive, opens a larger deal universe. We leverage CF Private Equity’s global primary platform, resources, and deep industry relationships to source and diligence transactions. We believe the strength of our organization should allow for a large, consistent source of deal flow and, in many instances, greater knowledge of the underlying assets.
Key Themes
Secondary volumes have grown exponentially in recent years, leading to abundant supply, but also making selectivity crucial. At CF Private Equity, we believe that our knowledge, extensive experience and relationships will lead to differentiated deal flow and opportunities. Our programs invest across the secondary market including Limited Partner positions, tail-end fund wind downs, General Partner-led opportunities and secondary directs.
370+
transactions completed since 2013
- Track record refers to the inception of investments in private funds by CF Private Equity or its successors in 1988.
- Capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access managers are fund managers that may accept only a limited number of investors and/or were oversubscribed in their last vintage fund and/or are selective in choosing limited partners. The assessment of whether managers are capacity-constrained or otherwise difficult to access is based on Commonfund's internal databases, qualitative assessment and conversations with managers and has not been independently verified.
- Raised in buyouts and growth equity commitments since 1988 through September 30, 2024.
- Raised in venture capital commitments since 1990 inception through September 30, 2024.
- Notice to Proceed or NTP means any written notice issued by an authority to a developer, in accordance with the project agreement, authorizing developer to proceed with the work described therein.
- Raised in sustainability commitments since 2021 inception through September 30, 2024.
- Raised in natural resources commitments since 1995 inception through September 30, 2024.
- Includes all co-investments made from CF Private Equity's or its successors' partnerships since 2012.
- As of September 30, 2024.
- As of September 30, 2024.
The information in this material is for illustration and discussion purposes only. It is not intended to be, nor should it be construed or used as, investment, tax or legal advice, any recommendation or opinion regarding the appropriateness or suitability of any investment or strategy, or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any interest in any security, including any interest in a private fund, pool, investment product, managed account or other investment vehicle (each, an “Investment Product”). This material is qualified in its entirety by the information contained in any Investment Product’s offering documents, including the governing partnership or operating agreement, investment management agreement, subscription agreement, or an Investment Product’s prospectus or other offering memorandum related thereto, as applicable (collectively, a “Prospectus”).
Any offer or solicitation of an investment in an Investment Product may be made only by delivery of the Investment Product’s Prospectus to qualified investors by CSI. Prospective investors should rely solely on the Prospectus in making any investment decision. The Prospectus contains important information, including, among other information, a description of an Investment Product’s risks, investment program, fees and expenses, and should be read carefully before any investment decision is made. This material does not take into account the particular investment objectives, restrictions, or financial, legal or tax situation of any specific investor. An investment in an Investment Product is not suitable for all investors.
Each Investment Manager is registered with the SEC as an investment adviser. CSI is registered as a broker-dealer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”). The registrations and memberships above in no way imply that the SEC, FINRA or SIPC have endorsed any of the entities, products or services discussed herein. See link below to Important Disclosures for more information.
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