Silver Lake expanding leadership team: source

CALIFORNIA, USA: Silver Lake, the $14 billion private equity asset manager with a focus on technology investments, is boosting its top management team, a source familiar with the matter said, as the firm prepares to transition to a new generation of leaders.

Fierce competition among buyout groups for institutional investor money has put the spotlight on the transition plans of many of these firms as a second generation of dealmakers is called on to prove it can be as successful as their founders.

Glenn Hutchins, Jim Davidson and David Roux, now in their fifties, co-founded Silver Lake in 1999 and went on to invest in some of the technology sector's hottest properties, including internet firms Zynga and Skype, the latter more than tripling their investment.

Silver Lake has informed its investors that Mike Bingle, Egon Durban, Ken Hao and Greg Mondre, who have been with the firm for more than a decade, are being promoted from managing directors to managing partners, the source said on Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

The move will increase their share of the earnings in the private equity firm, diluting the founding partners, the source said. Together with Davidson, the four new managing partners will sit in a committee with broad day-to-day responsibility for managing the firm, the source added.

The changes had been anticipated within the firm, with Roux already having taken a step back from active management, the source said. Hutchins will continue to be actively involved in the running of the firm, the source added.

The private equity firm is gearing up for another round of fundraising in 2012 as its latest fund, Silver Lake Partners III, which closed in 2007 with $9.3 billion of equity capital commitments, is almost invested, the source said.

Silver Lake is currently in a high-profile battle for Yahoo Inc. It is vying for a minority stake in the firm together with software giant Microsoft Corp and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, sources have told Reuters