Monday, December 12, 2011

Soros-backed Silver Lake Kraftwerk Closes First $200 Mil. of $1.25 Billion Clean Energy Fund

Not to imply that George is going all starry-eyed hippydippy but the Sept. 30, 2011 13F is the greenest that Soros Fund Management has put out.* Unfortunately for Soros watchers either this one or the Dec. 31 report will be the last as the Fund returns money to outside investors and avoids the reporting requirements of the Dodd-Frank act.

The top five holdings show two in nat gas and one farmland:

Motorola Solutions, Inc. 13.25%
ADECOAGRO S.A. 10.53%
InterOil Corporation 10.27%
Emdeon Inc 4.6%
WESTPORT INNOVATIONS NEW 4.38%

Keep in mind that the 13F only shows U.S. traded issues and represents 20% of Mr. Soros' net worth. Much more interesting is what he's doing with the other $20Bil. More on that another time.

Here's earth2tech with the headline story:
Private equity firm Silver Lake’s first foray into energy and cleantech investing is gonna be a big one. According to a filing, Silver Lake Kraftwerk is raising a $1.25 billion fund and has closed a little over $200 million of it. The fund, announced back in February, was expected to be large, and Silver Lake had teamed up with billionaire George Soros for it.


The second half of 2011 hasn’t been a particularly easy time for raising a cleantech fund, thanks to macroeconomic conditions and a backlash against cleantech investments in the U.S. Silver Lake Kraftwerk has another almost $1 billion to close. Khosla Ventures has also managed to raise another billion dollar cleantech fund this year.

Silver Lake Kraftwerk has been able to put together a sort of cleantech dream team, bringing on Adam Grosser from Foundation Capital, Raj Atluru from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Cathy Zoi, who was formerly the Department of Energy’s second in command under Steven Chu....MORE 
SLK is officed in Silicon Valley and China.

*During the height of the climate wars in 2008-2010 the fund was resolute in it's backing of coal and oil issues. I'm guessing that Mr. Soros had some hint of what the Democrat controlled Congress was up to re: climate stuff, despite all the legislative bluster to the contrary.

My best guess is we look at the natural gas and late stage technology for hints at where the next meeting of the crony club will be held.