When Michael Levitt resigned as a partner at private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst in August 2001 after the firm lost money on telecom investments, he steered clear of publicity and quietly founded New York–based fund manager Stone Tower Capital.
Now, Levitt, 48, who has built Stone Tower into one of the largest managers of leveraged loans, with $7.7 billion in assets under management, is back in the spotlight. Last month Everquest Financial, his co-venture with Bear Stearns Asset Management, announced that it would go public.
Everquest, formed in October, invests in the equity portions of collateralized debt obligations. BSAM has provided the majority of the funding for Everquest, which is run by Levitt and Ralph Cioffi, 51, a senior managing director at BSAM. To date, the fund has invested $720 million in CDOs managed by Stone Tower, BSAM and a variety of investment managers.
Levitt declined to comment on the offering, citing securities regulations. He also would not comment on another development revealed in the S-1 prospectus: One Everquest investor is I/ST Equity Partners, a private equity fund managed by Levitt that quietly raised $2.5 billion last year, making it one of the largest buyout start-ups in history.
