JLL Partners - History

History

JLL traces its roots back to Gilliam Joseph & Littlejohn, a merchant bank founded in 1987 by William J. Gilliam, Peter A. Joseph and Angus C. Littlejohn Jr. The three founders met in the mid-1980s at the Quadrex Corporation, a small New York brokerage. They initially leased their office space from Bennett S. LeBow, a 1980s corporate raider and fellow Drexel Burnham Lambert client. At Quadrex, Gilliam, the youngest of the three, managed the mergers and acquisitions unit, and the other two reported to him. After a series of successful investments, the three decided to leave Quadrex and set up their own small private equity firm. In 1988, Paul S. Levy, formerly a managing director, at Drexel Burnham Lambert who focused on corporate restructurings and exchange offers, was recruited to join the firm, which was renamed Gilliam Joseph Littlejohn & Levy. Levy helped his new partners secure $150 million of capital for buyout transactions from his former firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert.

JLL experienced an early success with the leveraged buyout of Rexene Corp, a Texas-based chemical company, which made the partners multi-millionaires. Gilliam would eventually set up his own small investment firm Gilliam & Company to focus on investments in chemicals and plastics and would serve as chairman of Rexene. In 1991, Gilliam, faced a similar falling out with the board of Rexene and abruptly resigned.

JLL's investment funds have experienced mixed results. According to data from Private Equity Intelligence, JLL Partners Fund III and V have proven to be top-performing for their respective vintage years, however funds I and IV were slightly below the median for their vintage years and the returns on fund II were in the bottom quartile of 1994 vintage funds.

In 1996, Angus Littlejohn resigned from Joseph Littlejohn & Levy to form a new private investment firm, Littlejohn & Co. The following year, in 1998, Peter Joseph left and joined Palladium Equity Partners, a middle-market private equity firm with a specialization in investments in the U.S. Hispanic market and also in Mexico, Spain, and Brazil, founded the prior year.

In 2002, after a lengthy and difficult fund-raising process, the rechristened "JLL Partners" was able to close a new private equity fund, JLL Partners Fund IV LP., with $750 million of investor commitments, representing a 25% decrease from its previous fund.