• by Tony Silber , April 26, 2022

Growth Catalyst Partners, the Chicago-based private-equity firm with a number of media-industry investments, announced this week that it has closed its second investment fund at $270 million, with partner commitments easily exceeding its target for the fund of $200 million.

GCP’s targeted investment sectors include information, marketing and tech-enabled services businesses. Among GCP’s media sector portfolio companies are the B2B media and information company CyberRisk Alliance, the digital media company GovExec, and The Equine Network, a hybrid information company that straddles the enthusiast and B2B sides of the $130 billion U.S. equine industry.

GCP attributes the performance of the new fund to a differentiated strategy of offering an investment framework that emphasizes a blend of sector experience, M&A strategy and PE investment experience.

Managing Partner Jim TenBroek noted that nearly every investor in GCP—a $130 million fund that launched in 2019—also participated in GCP II, and that most increased their commitment. “We also added an outstanding group of new institutional and family office LPs that had been tracking our progress, in some cases since our early days,” he said. “As a larger fund, GCP II allows GCP to expand our team and better support GCP II portfolio companies with capital and expertise.”

The firm’s investor base includes a broad range of institutions, family offices and executives from GCP’s targeted sectors, including managers of current portfolio companies.

GCP II will seek to make control-oriented buyouts in established, profitable businesses and will use targeted M&A to accelerate organic and inorganic growth as it seeks to create market leading companies of scale. To date, GCP has established 11 platform companies, including three platform companies already established in the GCP II portfolio, and has acquired over 60 privately held businesses in building those platforms.

Since Growth Catalyst Partners was founded in 2015, it has completed over 60 acquisitions across its 11 industry-leading platform companies.