NY TIMES: Brazil Firm Raises $309 Million for Education-Focused Fund

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The Brazilian investment firm Bozano Investimentos has raised a new 800 million reais (about $309 million) private equity fund focused on the education sector, in another indication that some investors are looking beyond the country’s current economic travails.
The fund is more than double the size of the last fund the firm oversaw in 2009. It also reached the target that Bozano set earlier this year when it started raising funds.
The new fund, which includes the European media conglomerate Bertelsmann as an investor, is expected to formally close sometime in January, according to three people familiar with the firm’s plans but not authorized to speak publicly.
“They have reached their hard-cap,” meaning the maximum, and “are no longer actively fund-raising,” one person said. Bozano now awaits paperwork and bureaucratic procedures, albeit no simple or sure thing in Brazil.
An email sent to an address on Bozano’s website went unanswered.
The new fund comes as Brazil continues to face tough times. Its economy grew by a meager 0.1 percent in the third quarter of this year after contracting in each of the first two quarters.
Still, private equity fund-raising in Brazil has been robust this year
Last month, Advent International said it raised a new $2.1 billion fund for Latin America. Earlier this year, Patria Investments, in which the Blackstone Group has a 40 percent stake, closed on a new $1.8 billion fund.
Bozano Investimentos, based in Rio de Janeiro, was formed in 2013 after Grupo Bozano acquired and then merged three investment firms: BR Investimentos, Mercatto Gestão de Recursos and Trapezus Asset Management.
Grupo Bozano, which has a 20 percent stake in the firm, was founded in the early 1960s by Júlio Bozano. It went on to invest in diverse sectors, including airline companies like Azul, which this week once again filed for an initial public offering.
The finance sector was always at its heart, though. The investment bank Banco Bozano Simonsen, for example, was acquired by the Spanish bank Santander in 2000.