Sentinel Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in mid-market companies, has sold Apex Companies, a provider of end-to-end environmental consulting and engineering solutions, to Morgan Stanley Capital Partners.  Financial terms of the deal, which will see Sentinel maintain a minority position in the business post-closing, have not been disclosed. Apex serves a large and diverse client base spanning both the public and private sectors and a broad range of end-markets, including energy, industrial, manufacturing, real estate, retail, and telecom.  Sentinel acquired Apex in November 2018 and since then has completed four successful add-on acquisitions. Robert W Baird &

Blackstone is one of a number of private equity firms considering making a bid to acquire Cvent Holding Corp, a US-based provider of software for the events management sector, in a deal that could value the business at up to $4 billion, according to a report by Reuters. News of a potential sale of the firm, which offers a range of products for automating the event management process, pushed the company’s shares 23% higher on 31 January, up roughly 1% in trading.  A deal would see Cvent return to private hands, where it was in 2016, when PE firm Vista

MiddleGround Capital, an operationally focused private equity firm that makes control investments in North American middle market B2B industrial and specialty distribution companies, has acquired Megatech, a new digital manufacturing platform focused on computerised numerical control machining of highly-complex, highly-precise, low volume engineered parts.

The Riverside Company, a global private equity investor focused on the smaller end of the middle market, has acquired EnAppSys, a data and analytics provider to the European energy market. The investment is an add-on to Riverside’s Montel AS platform, a Norwegian provider of energy and electricity market information.  Founded in 2003 in Middlesbrough, UK, EnAppSys currently serves B2B clients across the energy market, including traders, suppliers, generators, infrastructure businesses and the public sector. The company has a customer base across 12 countries in Europe, plus the USA and UAE,.  Montel, headquartered in Oslo, provides energy and electricity market information

Private equity investment firm Inflexion has agreed to sell its investment in Scott Dunn, a luxury travel operator, to Flight Centre Travel Group, an Australian listed travel agency. 

Dutch diagnostics form Qiagen NV is considering selling a minority stake in its bioinformatics division, in a deal that could value that business at more than $1 billion, to a private equity investor, according to a Report by Bloomberg. The report cites unnamed sources as revealing that the firm is working with a financial adviser as it explores bringing in an outside investor to provide additional funding to the unit which develops software for analysing biological data.  Qiagen is reportedly planning to keep a majority stake in the profitable bioinformatics business, with talks said to be ongoing but no final

Funds advised by Permira have acquired a majority stake in Acuity Knowledge Partners, a provider of research, analytics and business intelligence to the financial services sector, from mid-market private equity investor Equistone Partners Europe.