The transfer of the Tenzing CFO from INVESCO Private Capital to Vedanta Capital has been completed following a noteholder vote and now Vedanta is focusing on fundraising and building up. Vedanta was set up by Partners Parag Saxena, Alessandro Piol and Howard Goldstein, who left INVESCO in the spring (CIN, 3/3). Piol declined comment.
Fitch Ratings affirmed the portfolio's ratings recently. It says the vote to transfer was triggered by a key man event in April when the Tenzing management team left INVESCO. It is believed they chose to move because Saxena was the face of the fund during fundraising and he was the one who structured it and worked with BNP Paribas to set it up.
Tenzing is a $275 million collateralized fund obligation set up in December 2004. At launch, the collateral of Tenzing was set to consist of at least 40 private equity funds containing about 1,000 distinct investments in the underlying portfolio companies, according to Fitch (3/3). The equity side currently contains about 30 or 40 names.
Vedanta is currently fundraising and the core of its activities will be directed at investments in both the U.S. and Asia. It is anticipated the firm will be involved in a series of activities in the private equity space, possibly as soon as the first half of this year. Those activities, however, will consist of more direct investments than fund investments.
The firm currently consists of 12 employees, with recent hires including Gonzalo Cordova, Michael Patterson, Larry Posner and Shrikant Sathe. Others have been hired although they have not started full time. Sathe will be opening a West Coast office in the San Francisco Bay area by the end of this quarter. Posner is currently working part time and will join full time in the summer.
It is anticipated the firm will be looking to expand its operations into Asia, more specifically into India, where Saxena has been very involved. He serves on the Foreign Direct Investment task force reporting to the Prime Minister of India.
Goldstein left in February and Piol and Saxena left soon after. In July, Amvescap, which owns INVESCO, bought Wilbur Ross & Co. and hired Wilbur Ross to manage the private-equity business.
