Allocations
Law firm Howard Kennedy and its regulated London Stock Exchange sponsor, Howard Kennedy Corporate Services, have advised a new entrant to the VCT market – Hazel Targa VCT.
Hazel Targa VCT PLC brings together Hazel Capital, an established investment adviser in the VCT market, and investment advisers Welbeck Capital Partners LLP to launch a new and genuinely innovative VCT focusing on convertible loan notes. The new VCT will look to raise GBP20 million under this offer.
The Howard Kennedy team was led by partner Keith Lassman, with support from senior associate Ian Scott and solicitor Sian Thomas.
Lassman
Many investors choose to disregard potential investment in an infrastructure fund due to terms and conditions. Utilising information from the 2015 Preqin Private Equity Fund Terms Advisor and the Preqin Investor Outlook: Alternative Assets, H2 2015, this extract from this month’s Preqin Infrastructure Spotlight examines the fund terms and conditions of unlisted infrastructure funds and their effect on the alignment of interests between investors and fund managers.
In Q3 2015, Preqin conducted a series of detailed interviews with active institutional investors in infrastructure in order to gain insight into their attitudes towards the asset class. The study revealed that
Preqin’s latest factsheet takes a detailed look at closed-end private real estate fundraising for emerging managers in the US.
Fundraising
Preqin’s Real Estate Online contains detailed information on 529 private real estate funds managed by US-based emerging managers*, which have secured a total of USD104 billion since 2007. Fundraising by US-based emerging private real estate managers has not emulated its pre-crisis peak in 2007 of 80 funds reaching a final close on USD17.3 billion in capital commitments (Fig 1). The downturn led to year-on-year declines in aggregate capital raised before recovering in 2011, when USD14 billion was raised by 70
Noerr has advised Inflexion Private Equity on the joint acquisition of the global animal and crop health division of the market research group GfK.
The British investor takes over this division with its global market research activities alongside with the current management under the lead of Stephen Hearn by way of a carve-out.
The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter 2016. It is planned that all 220 staff members will remain with the carved-out division.
The Noerr team led by the London partner Dr Thomas Schulz advised particularly in connection with the due diligence
The InfraDeals Latin America Analysis for YTD 2015 points to a sharp decline in infrastructure deal count this year after 2014’s boom. However new greenfield projects are on the rise as governments seek countercyclical investments, and foreign investors are attracted into the region because of the lack of profitable alternatives in traditional markets like Europe.
A total of 109 greenfield, brownfield, sales and refinancing deals closed in the first ten months of 2015 in Latin America, totalling around USD35.75 billion. This is a sharp decline in comparison to 2014’s USD51 billionFY total but still above the 91 deals for USD32.6
Amplience, an on-demand Big Content Platform, has secured USD8 million in a financing round led by Silicon Valley Bank and Columbia Lake Partners.
This latest financing comes on the back of impressive growth in North America. Over the last 12 months, clients including Panasonic North America, Marc Jacobs, John Varvatos, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Theory Helmut Lang have adopted its market-leading Big Content Platform. This announcement follows an earlier USD10.5 million Series B round of funding led by Octopus Ventures in March 2015.
Andrew Hunter, Director at Silicon Valley Bank, says: “Amplience continues to impress us with its drive
Alibaba Group has launched its Entrepreneurs Fund for Hong Kong, which is aimed at entrepreneurs wanting to take advantage of the resources offered by Alibaba’s ecosystem in e-commerce, logistics, mobile platforms, cloud computing and financial services.
The Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, a not-for-profit initiative, will invest in qualifying companies in the start-up, growth and expansion phases of the company life cycle. Qualifying businesses will leverage the platforms in the Alibaba ecosystem to offer products and services to mainland China and the world. HKD1 billion has been earmarked for the Hong Kong Fund.
A number of accomplished business and community
AECOM is to lead its the Energy Technologies Institute’s (ETI) Heat Infrastructure Development project, a GBP500k programme lasting approximately 12 months that will seek to identify the innovative solutions needed to deliver major reductions in the capital cost of heat network infrastructure and accelerate its deployment.
It will examine the technical, process and system developments needed to deliver a step change reduction in the capital costs, along with cost estimates and time frames for undertaking these developments.
District heat networks supply heat to homes and businesses through pipes carrying hot water. They have great potential to deliver CO2 emissions
The Ukrainian Redevelopment Fund (URF), a private investment fund advised by Soros Fund Management, is to acquire a significant equity stake in IT service provider Ciklum Holding Limited.
The transaction which will see URF acquires the entire stake held by Horizon Capital and an undisclosed portion of the stake held by Majgaard Holdings Ltd, is expected to close by the end of 2015.
Torben Majgaard, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ciklum, says: “Over the past 13 years, we have built Ciklum into an award-winning, innovative global IT service provider, with strong engineering capabilities and solid relationships with some
Morgenthaler Private Equity (MPE) has recapitalised B&E Group which is comprised of two distinct business units, an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) group, which manufactures complex, machined components used in commercial aerospace, military and space applications, and a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) group, which repairs commercial aerospace engine components. The Company is headquartered in Southwick, MA and Fort Myers, FL.
MPE partnered in the transaction with B&E Group's existing shareholders and senior management team, including Chief Executive Officer John Wilander and Chief Operating Officer Paul Tobias, both of whom will serve as members of the Company's Board of Directors.
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
