San Francisco buy-out group Hellman & Friedman has raised a new $8.8bn fund a year after pulling back on plans for a much larger amount, in the latest sign of a partial revival among private equity firms that escaped the worst excesses of the industry’s bubble.

While short of the $13bn in provisional commitments H&F first attracted before the credit crisis, the fund, due to be announced on Thursday, is among the biggest so far this year, slightly below the $9bn raised by energy investor First Reserve.