What to do when you have $1.7B to spend

What would you do if you had $1.7 billion to spend in the government market?

We’ll find out over the next few years as Arlington Capital Partners has closed its latest fund: Arlington Capital Partners V or "Fund V." They collected $1.7 billion from a group of investors that includes pension funds, corporate pension funds, insurance companies, something called “fund of funds” and foundations.

Kudos to Arlington Capital as that $1.7 billion was the maximum they could raise for this fund. But also kudos to the market for continuing to prove that it is a reliable market to invest in that it attracts a steady stream of private equity buyers.

And as investment banker Kevin DeSanto said at a recent Washington Technology event, “Everyone in the market should be grateful for private equity.” An investment banker would say that of course, but buyers and sellers in the market should be as well as private equity in recent years has driven many of the larger deals and their value in general.

Since April 2018, Arlington Capital has sold seven portfolio companies and added five new businesses. It also closed on seven acquisitions to expand already existing platforms.

Among its new investments are Octo Consulting, Centauri, and Tyto Athene. And in the last year or so, it has sold Polaris Alpha to Parsons and Endeavor Robotics to FLIR Systems.

Not all of Arlington Capital’s investments are in the government space. It has already closed its first deal out of the new $1.7 billion fund, buying Riverpoint Medical, a Portland, Oregon, based developer of medical devices.