Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates and Nike Inc Chairman Phil Knight invested in a new buyout fund of as much as US$2.5 billion being raised by Oak Hill Capital Partners LP, a firm started by Texas billionaire Robert Bass.
Their participation was disclosed by Oak Hill managing partner Taylor Crandall during a fund-raising pitch to the Oregon Investment Council on Thursday. Bass, Knight and Oak Hill's 32 professionals invested a combined US$500 million in the new fund, Crandall said. The size of the investment by Gates wasn't disclosed.
Bass founded Oak Hill two decades ago to invest his own money. The organization, run from Menlo Park, California, and New York, acts as a family office for Bass and Knight and manages more than US$10 billion for individuals and institutions.
Bass "wouldn't be committing that type of money if he didn't have confidence in the team," Jay Fewel, senior equities investment officer for Oregon, told the council.
The Oregon council, which has been trying to invest money with different buyout managers partly to reduce its reliance on Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, approved US$100 million for the Oak Hill fund. The council oversees more than US$46 billion of state pension assets.
Other investors in the new fund include the government of Singapore and Stanford University, Crandall, 51, told the council. Oak Hill expects to finish raising the fund around the middle of the year.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest US pension fund, also invested, said Rick Hayes, who left Calpers to join Oak Hill as a managing partner last year.
Buyout and venture capital firms worldwide may seek to raise a record US$250 billion for new funds this year as lower borrowing costs make purchases cheaper and rising stock markets make it easier to profit from sales, according to Private Equity Intelligence Ltd.
Oak Hill has gathered US$1.4 billion of pledges after four months, said Hayes, 39. While the fund-raising document says the target is US$1.75 billion, Oak Hill will probably raise as much as US$2.5 billion, Fewel said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats