Kuala Lumpur-headquartered firm Creador is set to hold the final close on its sixth flagship vehicle on what will be its largest ever fund, Private Equity International has learned.
The growth equity firm is finalising several LP commitments in the beginning of 2025 and the fund will be concluded by mid-January, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. The fund is expected to raise $930 million.
Launched in March, Creador VI had an initial target of $800 million, PEI reported last year. The cap was raised by $130 million to accommodate extra LP appetite, making it 33 percent larger than its 2021-vintage predecessor – Creador V – which closed above target on $700 million in 2022, PEI data shows.
Creador declined to comment.
PEI understands that 95 percent of Fund VI’s LPs are returning investors, including Asian Development Bank, which committed $75 million in September. Prior to the latest fund, ADB had also committed to Creador’s third, fourth and fifth flagships.
In an interview in October, Janette Hall, director of investment funds and the special initiatives division in private sector operations at ADB, told PEI that Creador is one of the institution’s top-performing funds. “For our 2014-16 vintages, it ranges from a low of 0.2x to a high of 1.5x,” she said at the time.
Besides ADB, Fund VI also received commitments from other development finance institutions including International Finance Corporation and FinDev Canada, PEI data shows. Creador is understood to also be onboarding new LPs from the Middle East and North Asia.
Like its predecessor, Fund VI will invest in growth opportunities with significant business operations in South and Southeast Asia. According to ADB documents, Creador VI will construct a portfolio of 10-15 minority stake investments and “may also selectively pursue control and roll-up opportunities”. It targets companies based in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam and may also invest into Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand on an opportunistic basis, the documents showed.
Amid rising geopolitical and trade tensions between China and the US, investors and GPs alike have been exploring the opportunities in Southeast Asia and India diversify their Asia-Pacific portfolios. The GDP of the Southeast Asia’s six largest economies – Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore – is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.1 percent over the next decade, outpacing that of China, data from Bain & Co shows.
The challenge, though, is for both India and Southeast Asia to deliver consistent DPIs for their investors.
