Deals
Andreessen Horowitz – the venture capital firm created by Netscape and Opsware founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz – has led a Series C USD58m round in Europe’s leading financial tech start-up TransferWise.
TransferWise’s existing investors, including Sir Richard Branson, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Index Ventures, IA Ventures, and Seedcamp, also participated in the round.
The start-up will use these funds for global expansion. It opens its US office next month and will be opening offices in Germany and in Australia in the next few months. The company plans to open 300 further currency routes in the next year.
Connection Capital has successfully completed a commitment, on behalf of its clients, to the third fund from 17Capital, a London-based specialist investor of preferred equity in private equity funds.
Due to the high level of demand from its clients, Connection Capital exceeded its original allocation to 17Capital Fund 3.
Connection Capital aggregates capital from its clients into a single, managed syndicate and therefore investors are able to participate in Fund 3 alongside well-known institutional investors at a much lower entry level than their institutional counterparts. All Connection Capital investments are available in multiples of GBP25,000.
The Fund closed in December
Excelsior Capital Partners has assumed a majority ownership interest in Via Seating, a manufacturer of cutting-edge and ergonomically designed office chairs and lounge seating, through a balance sheet restructuring.
The transaction enables Via to continue growing through new and innovative product lines.
Based in Reno, Nevada, Via offers an extensive family of chairs to fit its customers’ unique needs for design, form and function, while maintaining an industry-leading quick-ship program that guarantees a 48-hour turnaround. The company’s products are highly customisable and include executive chairs, task chairs, conference room chairs, stackable chairs, and modular lounge seating that can be configured
Private equity house Maven Capital Partners has led the GBP4.5 million Management Buy-In of CB Technology Limited (CB), an established contract electronics manufacturer with a focus on complex manufacturing and testing for deployment in harsh environments.
Maven has assembled a strong buy-in team for CB led by John Cameron, formerly at GE & UTC Technologies and who most recently served as Commercial Director at Finnish-based Marioff, where he headed-up a team of over 200 people with annual revenues in excess of EUR100 million. Graham Scott, previously CFO of Memex, a SAS Group company, has also joined the business as FD.
Preqin and Baxon Solutions have formed a strategic partnership, which includes Preqin taking a significant minority stake in Baxon.
This will accelerate Baxon’s development and delivery of a comprehensive portfolio management and valuations platform for the private equity industry. The principal aim of the partnership is to combine the alternative assets expertise of both firms to address the rapidly increasing market demand from both GPs and LPs for transparent, accurate and actionable data on their funds and portfolio investments.
Jorge Hansen, Managing Director of Baxon, says: “We are extremely excited about partnering with Preqin and becoming part of the
Private equity investment firm Harvest Partners has formed Harvest Partners SCF (HP SCF), a private investment advisor that provides structured equity and junior debt solutions to business owners.
HP SCF intends to target investments with private equity-like returns while assuming the risks more characteristic of debt investments. HP SCF will endeavour to achieve protection of principal by:
• Investing in high quality companies that meet HP SCF’s specific investment criteria
• Structuring investments to be senior in liquidation preference to a significant amount of underlying enterprise value
• Obtaining rights, controls and protective covenants that HP SCF believes will further
The total value of exits from private equity-backed portfolio companies throughout 2014 hit USD428bn, higher than any year previously and up from the USD330bn of exits in 2013. Christopher Elvin, Preqin’s Head of Private Equity Products, comments on the current deals and exits environment:
2014 represented the highest ever annual value of private equity-backed buyout exits. This has resulted in a significant increase in the level of capital being returned to buyout fund investors, which had almost surpassed the full-year 2013 amount as of June 2014 (the latest data available). Furthermore, the total value of private equity backed buyout deals
Verne Global has secured USD98m of equity funding, led by Stefnir, an Icelandic asset management and private equity firm that is working with several of the largest Icelandic pension funds.
Existing investors – the Wellcome Trust, Novator Partners and General Catalyst – also participated in the round.
Verne Global will use the funds to further expand its wholesale and colocation service offerings, as well as to design and develop high-density, flexible resiliency data centre space. This investment round ensures that Verne Global can deliver the infrastructure capacity to serve the rapid growth in demand it is seeing from new and
Private equity funds manager TPH Partners has partnered with Clark and David Nicklas to form Laurel Mountain Energy, an independent upstream company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Laurel Mountain is focused on the acquisition and development of oil and gas properties across the Appalachian Basin, with a primary focus on the Marcellus, Upper Devonian and Utica formations in Western Pennsylvania.
Laurel Mountain is led by Clark Nicklas (CEO) and David Nicklas (President), a father-son team that has worked closely together for eleven years at Vista Resources, a well-established, independent oil and gas company that was founded by Clark Nicklas in 1987.
Seafort Advisors GmbH and ThyssenKrupp have signed an agreement on the sale of the Emder Werft und Dockbetriebe shipyard in Emden.
Completion of the deal is subject to the necessary permits and approvals and is scheduled for the first quarter of 2015.
A team led by lead partner Dr Tobias Schneider advised Seafort Advisors on all aspects of the transaction. CMS also provided Seafort Advisors with comprehensive advice in 2013, when the Hamburg-based independent private equity firm acquired three companies, and has subsequently advised on several add-on acquisitions. Seafort Advisors has a medium to long-term investment horizon. The private equity
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
