Allocations
Ara Partners Group, an alternative asset manager focused on the industrial, chemicals & materials and energy sectors, has made a majority investment in Centric Gas Services, (Centric), a local gas distribution platform headquartered in Magnolia, Texas.
Centric operates four local gas distribution companies and three gas transmission pipeline companies in high-growth areas in Texas. The Barnwell family, which in 1993 founded entities that Centric owns, will retain a substantial minority ownership position in Centric.
“Our partnership with Ara Partners is an important milestone for Centric,” says Robert S Barnwell IV, President of Centric. “This investment enables Centric to continue
Elements Talent Solutions, a disruptor to the USD200-plus billion worldwide recruitment market, has received a GBP3.45 million investment from BGF to accelerate its growth across Europe, the US and the APAC region.
While recent years have seen no shortage of technological innovation in the hiring market, Elements has pioneered a model which focuses on people and seeks to change the fundamental “transaction” mechanics of the industry. Its ‘embedded model’ involves Elements consultants working on-site within the client’s hiring function and partnering with them on every stage of the hiring process.
Elements has attracted clients from global brands such as
Eos Venture Partners (Eos) debut Insurtech fund, EVP I, has made its first two investments, in Concirrus, a marine insurance analytics platform and in Digital Fineprint (DFP) an SME-focused lead generation and underwriting solution.
Concirrus uses AI-powered software to help marine insurers move to “behavioural-based underwriting”. The software provides behavioural analysis that considers hundreds of factors including a ship’s location and speed to offer more accurate underwriting models. It accesses and interprets vast datasets, such as vessel statistics, movements, cargo and machinery information, and combines this with historical claims information to reveal the behaviours that correlate with underwriting and claims.
Questel, an online intellectual property (IP) service providers, has acquired MultiLing, a global leader in patent translations, with the support of its financial investors IK Investment Partners and Raise.
Founded in 1988 and based in Utah, MultiLing leverages their advanced technology platform to provide the highest quality patent translation services in the most cost-effective manner. Led by its founder, Michael Sneddon, and supported by its 235 employees across eight countries, MultiLing serves 350 clients globally (mostly large corporations) in their process of international filing of patents.
This acquisition is part of Questel’s strategy to build a one-stop-shop offering. MultiLing’s
Private equity firm IK Investment Partners’ (IK) IK VII Fund is to sell Transnorm Group (Transnorm), a provider of automation technology used in parcel, distribution and e-commerce warehouses, to Honeywell International (Honeywell) for approximately EUR425 million.
Founded in 1957, Transnorm has grown to become a global market leader for high-performance engineered conveyor solutions. The Company serves a global blue-chip customer base with strong relationships to all major system integrators as well as global parcel and e-commerce companies. In addition to its broad product portfolio, Transnorm also offers for its installed base of circa 160,000 units aftermarket services comprised of spare
Owlstone Medical, a global diagnostics company developing a breathalyser for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, has completed a USD50 million financing round to drive the global commercialisation of its Breath Biopsy platform.
The round brings the total raised by the company to circa USD73 million since founding in 2016.
As has been previously announced, the initial phase of this financing round was led by Aviva Ventures, the venture capital arm of Aviva plc, a global leader in insurance, and Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Li Ka-shing. The additional USD35 million completion of the round
Piper, a specialist investor in consumer branded businesses, has led a GBP15 million investment into Bloom & Wild, the online flower gifting brand that is disrupting Europe’s GBP14 billion fresh cut flower market.
Founded in 2013 by Aron Gelbard and Ben Stanway, Bloom & Wild has transformed the online flower gifting market, pioneering the concept of ‘letterbox flowers’. Its offering allows customers the ability to gift beautiful, high quality, long-lasting, fresh flowers in a convenient slim box that fits through the receiver’s letterbox. More than 50 million flowers have been shipped to date across the UK, France and Germany. Piper’s
Inverleith, a specialist consumer brands investor, has taken a majority stake in Planet Organic, the London health and wellbeing supermarket, food-to-go chain and online retailer.
Inverleith has injected equity into the Company to expand the existing store footprint in London, to more than double the current portfolio of stores over the next 5 years.
Ben Thomson, Chairman of Inverleith, says: “This is an interesting time of change for the High Street with shoppers wanting more community-based shopping. Consumers are looking for an experience when they shop, and for real knowledge about the products offered. They care deeply about the
Forbion, a European life science venture capital firm, has held the final close of its new flagship fund, Forbion IV. The oversubscribed fund closed at EUR360 million in capital commitments, significantly above its original target of EUR250 million.
Forbion IV, like its predecessor fund, Forbion III, will primarily focus on opportunities in the EU including the UK, with the remainder of the fund targeting opportunities mainly in North America.
Forbion’s fourth fund will focus on biopharma investments, building on its track record of creating high-return, high-impact businesses, built around exciting new science, proven management teams or assets sourced from
AnaCap Financial Partners (AnaCap), a specialist European financial services private equity firm, has acquired EUR225m of Italian NPLs in two separate portfolios.
A EUR141 million NPL secured portfolio was acquired from Volksbank, primarily comprised of SME loans. The majority of the portfolio is backed by property in Northern Italy. In addition, AnaCap has acquired from Banca di Pisa e Fornacette Credito Cooperativo an EUR84 million NPL portfolio also comprised of predominantly secured SME loans, largely collateralized by real estate in Tuscany.
These acquisitions follow on from more than EUR8 billion of performing and non-performing loans that funds advised by
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
