Thursday, December 4, 2008
CalPERS Sells Palomar Ventures Stake
CalPERS, the California pension fund which is a major limited partner in venture capital funds here, apparently sold its stake in Palomar Ventures III, L.P. sometime earlier this year. CalPERS has been selling funds on the secondary market as it seeks to pare down its holdings. A partner at Palomar Ventures declined to comment, saying that the firm has a "hard and fast" policy of not commenting on matters related to LPs. A spokesperson at CalPERS said it is not identifying funds sold in its sale on the secondary market, because of proprietary, contractual provisions against public disclosure; however, CalPERS did say that it committed $25 million in 2004 to Palomar Ventures III, L.P., and that Palomar had drawn down $9M in CalPERS capital as of December 31, 2007. CalPERS said that at that time the fund was seeing a net internal rate of return of -13%. CalPERS does not currently list Palomar in its list of current private equity investments held by the pension fund.