Onex Corp. has gathered US$735 million for a new short-term buyout fund, the latest move by the Canadian private equity firm to restart growth under a new chief executive officer.  

Onex Partners Opportunities Fund will give its investment teams some capital to work with while the company gears up for a larger fundraising push for the next vintage of its flagship Onex Partners fund. 

The new vehicle will invest mostly in “upper middle market” companies in North America and Europe, and is expected to be deployed relatively quickly — likely over 12 to 18 months, CEO Bobby Le Blanc told analysts on Friday.  

A majority of the money committed so far — US$400 million — is from Onex itself. The fund will have a final close in the next three to four months, Le Blanc said. 

The CEO, who took over last May, has been trimming expenses and restructuring after the firm’s money-raising efforts on Onex Partners VI hit the shoals. He named Tawfiq Popatia and Nigel Wright as co-heads of Onex Partners and hired Peter Brown, a longtime UBS Group executive, to lead its client team. 

The Toronto-based company has also raised US$795 million for the latest version of its smaller private equity strategy, known as Oncap, including US$250 million from the firm’s own balance sheet, according to its first-quarter earnings report. 

Onex, which manages about US$50 billion of assets, abandoned plans to expand its private wealth business last year, winding up its Gluskin Sheff business, with a number of those private wealth advisers moving to Royal Bank of Canada. 

Shares of Onex fell 4.7 per cent in Toronto to close at C$95.33, the lowest since January. The company reported investing capital of US$107.44 per share, slightly below the US$109.93 estimate of TD Cowen analyst Graham Ryding.