Striking Oil – CrownRock by Lime Rock Capital (EP.428)

Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry · Jan 20, 2025 · 1h 7m

When you think of the greatest private equity deals of all time, names like Google, Facebook, Uber, Dell, and Hilton come to mind. After a recent episode of Private Equity Deals, you might also think about 3G's acquisition of Burger King.

But I'd bet you wouldn't think about an oil and gas play called CrownRock. Lime Rock Capital created CrownRock alongside a management team with $96.5 million of cash and assets in 2007. Seventeen years later, sold the business to Occidental Petroleum for $12.5 billion.

Lime Rock's original investment made 79x its money, a net IRR of 18%, and $7.5 billion in…