Maximising ESG impact in private equity – the foundations of ESG

Affirma Capital has held a first close of its fifth Korea fund, Ascenta V, with an AUM of USD403 million, to invest in buyout and growth capital opportunities in emerging markets including Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

AND Digital, a British tech consultancy aiming to accelerate digital delivery for businesses by providing access to tech talent, has secured GBP8 million in follow-on funding from BGF, one of the UK’s most prominent growth economy investors. 

Toshiba, currently courted by numerous PE groups, confirmed it has ‘received an initial proposal’ from CVC this week and will ‘ask for further clarification and give it careful consideration’, in what looks like a process which could become Japan’s largest ever buyout deal.

Deutsche Investitions und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG) is one of the investors in the Vinci Impact and Return Fund IV, contributing up to USD11.8 million to the impact fund, which has a USD150 million target.  

With the financial services sector having experienced a lot of consolidation recently, Private Equity Wire sat down with Hugh Elwes (pictured), managing director of Stephens Europe, to talk about financial services M&A and why the sector is so busy at the moment.  

​​​​​​​In this week's podcast, Private Equity Wire hears from Andrew Bernstein, senior managing director and head of private equity at Capital Dynamics, on why some managers able to meet their fundraising targets despite the pandemic, while others are struggling to reach their targets, and why firms with proprietary sourcing capabilities might be better positioned to take advantage of liquidity-based opportunities at the moment?

In this week's podcast Private Equity Wire speaks to Sumit Mehta, Managing Director of Arrow Capital, about the growth of SPACs in emerging markets. The podcast looks into the differences between the US ecosystem versus emerging markets and forecasts the challenges that need to be resolved in order to fully leverage the trend globally. 

Private Equity Wire's PEWlive Healthcare Investing Summit brought together GPs, LPS and other private equity experts to share their insights into the fast-changing healthcare sector.

In this week’s podcast, Private Equity Wire picked the brains of Albright Capital CIO and co-founder John Yonemoto to find out how EM policy makers responded to the pandemic, whether events that unfolded in 2020 have reinforced some of the beliefs LPs might hold regarding EM private markets, and some of the investment risk disparities between developed and emerging markets at the moment.

Ten scaleups, which between them secured 20 per cent of total UK tech VC investment at USD3.5 billion drove UK tech in 2020, according to Tech Nations’ latest report on the state of the UK tech sector.