Deals
The recent IPO of online building products retailer CMO Group PLC rounded off a busy and productive 12 months for private equity firm Key Capital Partners(KCP). The flotation represented the firm’s third high-value exit in the last 12 months; coming hot on the heels of the sale of nursing business Routes Healthcare (North) to Palatine Private Equity in June and IT training and consultancy firm Sparta Global to Inflexion in October.
In aggregate, the three exits delivered total proceeds of GBP96 million to the firm’s eighth fund; a combined money multiple of 5.8-times KCP’s total investment in the three deals.
Global investment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) has acquired LiveU, a specialist in live video streaming and remote production solutions, from Francisco Partners, a global investment firm that specialises in partnering with technology businesses.
Details of the transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals, have not been disclosed.
Founded in 2006, LiveU is the pioneer of a bonded cellular technology-based live video transmission platform, offered to major live broadcast news networks and sports content owners globally. LiveU’s technology enables customers to apply innovation and automation to the entire production workflow. LiveU provides an end-to-end solution combining mission-critical acquisition, cloud production
Vantage Health has been acquired by Northgate Public Services (NPS), a leading software and services provider to the public sector in the UK and a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation.
NPS has a market leading screening software for diabetes and hearing. It has helped to screen 10 million babies for the Newborn Hearing Screening Program in England and Northern Ireland, tested 500,000 patients with diabetes for retina damage and supports a number of medical registries such as the National Joint Registry (NJR), the largest orthopaedics registry in the world, and the international spinal registry platform, Spine Tango to help
Funds managed by Lindsay Goldberg, a private investment firm that focuses on partnering with families, are to sell Big Ass Fans, a specialist in high volume, low speed and connected fan categories, to Madison Industries’ Indoor Air Quality vertical (Madison IAQ).
Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Big Ass Fans provides branded air flow solutions that drive energy efficiency, thermal comfort and workplace safety and productivity. Serving the industrial, commercial and residential markets, the Company’s products are sold in over 150 countries, and its blue-chip customer base includes more than 80 per cent of companies listed
Klar, a leading digital financial services platform providing a transparent, free and secure alternative to traditional debit and credit services in Mexico, has closed its Series B funding round, subject to applicable regulatory approvals, including clearance of the Mexican Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) and the Mexican Economic Competition Commission (COFECE).
General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm, led the round with participation from existing investors Prosus Ventures, Quona Capital, Mouro Capital, International Finance Corporation and WTI. The funding will be used to strengthen Klar’s efforts to broaden access to consumer credit as Mexico’s transition to a digital economy
The number of first-time funding rounds into UK seed-stage startups declined for a second consecutive year in 2020, to 36 per cent below the 2018 peak for such deals, according to new research commissioned by SFC Capital.
The data also points to reductions both to the amount of money available for first-time rounds and the number of funds equipped to make such investments. SFC Capital is therefore calling for urgent action to reinvigorate seed-stage investment and secure the future of the next generation of companies that will drive the UK Government’s “levelling up” and “science superpower” economic agendas.
There
Calculus Capital (Calculus) and Foresight Group (Foresight), have sold Mologic Limited (Mologic), a specialist in lateral flow and rapid diagnostic technologies, and founder of Global Access Diagnostics.
Mologic’s co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Paul Davis, was the originator of the Clearblue pregnancy test, the world’s first commercial application of lateral flow technology.
Mologic was sold to Global Access Health, a not-for-profit company financed by the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), the impact investing arm of the Open Society Foundations, and a group of other philanthropic organisations and investors. SEDF and their consortia members will be strong strategic partners for Mologic,
Accident repair group AD Williams has secured a multi-million-pound investment from BGF, with the funding set to be used for the partial realisation of shareholder value and to facilitate the long-term growth of the group.
Founded in 2013 by CEO Stuart Bacchus, AD Williams is an owner-managed business with 14 sites in the Southeast of England, making it the sixth largest body shop repair provider in the UK. The business currently employs 250 people across its network.
The business’s core focus is repairing cars that have been in accidents, with over 18,000 cars being fixed in 2020 alone. In
DCVC and Temasek have led a USD430 million Series D funding into Pivot Bio, a nitrogen innovator in agriculture, bringing its total equity raised to more than USD600 million.
The capital will drive the company’s release of products focused on replacing the USD60 billion of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer sold each year to sustain corn, wheat, and rice.
Pivot Bio’s next stage of growth will focus on scaling its US business and expanding internationally. “Pivot Bio exemplifies the power of DeepTech solutions to create equitable and profitable outcomes for all stakeholders in immense industries like agriculture,” said Matt Ocko, co-managing partner
Mid-market European private equity firm Equistone Partners Europe (Equistone) has entered into an exclusive agreement with Orfite to acquire its majority stake in the GSCM Group (Groupe Solfab Constructions Modulaires), a modular construction specialist.
Through this transaction, Equistone will hold a majority stake in GSCM, alongside the management team and BNP Paribas Développement, who also reinvested in this funding round. Fuelled by strong organic growth and strengthened by three successful acquisitions between 2015 and 2019 (Decortes, Bodard and CNSE), GSCM continues to consolidate its position as an established player within the French modular construction market.
GSCM’s services include designing,
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
