Deals
Log Fire Pizza Co, a popular Italian street food brand, and Delaney’s Donkey, a new Irish Bar and Restaurant concept, are both set to open at The Riverwalk, the GBP30 million redevelopment on the banks of the River Wear in Durham.
This news comes as Odeon’s fit out works progress for the new multi-screen cinema. The Riverwalk is owned by Clearbell Property Partners II LP (Clearbell), a fund managed by Clearbell Capital.
Log Fire Pizza Co and Delaney’s Donkey are due to open this summer, joining Cosy Club and Turtle Bay on The Riverwalk’s striking new promenade. Winner of the
Authority Brands, a home services franchising platform backed by funds advised by Apax Partners, has acquired Clockwork, and certain of its affiliates from Direct Energy Group, a subsidiary of Centrica plc.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2019. The acquisition is the third home services add-on for Authority Brands since the company was acquired by funds advised by Apax Partners in September 2018.
Established in 1999, Clockwork delivers critical home services through three leading plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) providers across the United States. Its household-name brands – Benjamin Franklin Plumbing
Ÿnsect, an ag-tech innovator that specialises in breeding insects and transforming them into premium ingredients for fish feed, pet food and organic plant fertilisers, has raised USD125 million (EUR110m) in a Series C funding round to scale up production by building the world’s biggest insect farm in Amiens Metropole, Northern France.
Led by Astanor Ventures — and backed by established international funds including Bpifrance, Talis Capital, Idinvest Partners, Finasucre and Compagnie du Bois Sauvage — this investment is the largest-ever ag-tech funding deal outside of the United States.
With a mission to tap into the natural goodness of insects
iCON Infrastructure Partners II has completed the divestment of its interests in Beckton Energy Limited (Beckton) and Rothes CoRDe Limited (Rothes) to Arjun Infrastructure Partners (AIP). iCON’s co-investor at Beckton, Melquart Limited (Melquart), also sold its stake in the company.
Beckton is the owner of an 18MWe / 28MWth bio-liquids fired combined heat and power plant (CHP), which is strategically located in London and integrated with key infrastructure owned by the major utilities Cadent Gas Limited (formerly National Grid Gas Plc) and Thames Water Utilities Limited, to which Beckton provides heat and electricity respectively.
Rothes is the owner of
Luxcara, an asset manager focussed on renewable energy investments, has acquired the Finnish wind power project Välikangas, which has a projected capacity of 100 MW.
The produced electricity will be sold to an off-taker on the basis of a power purchase agreement (PPA).
The wind farm has been developed by and will be built with ABO Wind as construction manager. Connection to the grid is envisaged for summer 2020.
“We continue to be convinced by wind power in the Nordics and are happy to realise this Finnish wind project on the basis of already established business partnerships thanks
Mourant has advised a New York-based private equity firm on its takeover of AIM-listed GBGI Limited (GBG).
GBG is a provider of international benefits insurance, operating globally across 120 jurisdictions. Trading principally as GBG Insurance Group, GBG is a fully integrated insurance group providing services from policy sales to claim administration.
The takeover of GBG was undertaken by way of a Guernsey scheme of arrangement and was sanctioned by the Royal Court in Guernsey on Wednesday, 20 February 2019. The aim of the takeover was to return GBG to private ownership thereby enabling enhanced financial and operational flexibility, together
The SaaS video management platform, Imagen, which holds both current and archive footage for major sporting organisations and news outlets, including Premier League, World Tennis Association and the BBC, has secured GBP6.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Downing Ventures.
The round also included capital from Guinness Asset Management Ltd. and existing investor Cambridge Innovation Capital.
Imagen helps sports, media and enterprise businesses to manage their expanding video and content libraries on its cloud-based technology. Imagen announced 88 per cent year on year growth in 2018 driven by clients including Premier League, World Tennis Association, BP
Audax Private Equity (Audax), in partnership with management, has completed the sale of Rogue Wave Software (Rogue Wave) to Perforce Software (Perforce), a Clearlake Capital portfolio company.
Headquartered in Louisville, CO, Rogue Wave is a leading provider of software development tools and code components to Global 5000 enterprises, helping developers tackle the hardest and most complex issues in building, connecting and securing applications. Rogue Wave’s product offering solves problems across a broad portion of the software development lifecycle, spanning Open Source Support, API management, Java Development, and other key focus areas for developers. Known for its commitment to help developers
Chinese companies have outpaced their western counterparts by value in the top five VC funded companies in the global payments space during 2018, according to GlobalData, a leading and data analytics company.
Of the top five, two companies represented China with a combined value of USD14.73 billion, followed by two American firms with a combined value of USD0.6 billion and one UK-based company with USD0.25 billion.
Ant Financial, the parent company of Alipay (largest mobile payments network in China), has attracted the highest VC funding among all companies in the payments space during the period. Interestingly, the USD14 billion
Monroe Capital has acted as co-lead arranger on the funding of a senior credit facility to support the growth of Mindbody, by private equity sponsor Vista Equity Partners.
Based in San Luis Obispo, California, Mindbody is the leading technology platform for the fitness, beauty and wellness services industries. Local entrepreneurs worldwide use Mindbody’s integrated software and payments platform to run, market and grow their businesses.
Consumers use Mindbody to more easily find, engage and transact with fitness, wellness and beauty providers in their local communities.
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
