Allocations
Octopus Investments has completed a development with Transact to enable shares in its Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) to be bought and held on a financial adviser platform for the first time.
Previously VCTs were unable to be purchased on adviser platforms or by a nominee account as they needed to be bought by the individual directly in order to qualify for the tax reliefs.
The launch of the service from Transact, which is an adviser-facing only platform, follows the change announced in the Finance Bill 2014 last year that allows shares in VCTs to be bought by a nominee
Simplilearn, a provider of certification courses to professionals, has raised USD15 million in Series C funding led by Mayfair, with existing investors Kalaari Capital and Helion Venture Partners also participating.
Simplilearn has raised a total of USD27 million in capital.
Simplilearn offers a multitude of training and certifications for business use and career advancement. The blended learning platform offers a combination of online classes, in-person workshops and corporate trainings, all led by Simplilearn's over 2,000 qualified trainers. Courses span vendors, industries and platforms: Simplilearn offers training for everything from Advanced Cloud Computing to Six Sigma.
"Simplilearn has had an impressive
This extract from the Preqin Quarterly Update: Infrastructure, Q1 2015 reflects on the first quarter’s infrastructure fundraising activity.
Fundraising for unlisted infrastructure funds declined in Q1 2015, with just four funds closing, raising an aggregate USD5.3 billion in institutional capital (Fig 1). This represents the lowest amount of capital raised in a single quarter since Q3 2013, when USD4.8 billion was raised. However, those fund managers that are closing funds are often raising large amounts of capital; the average fund size has increased from USD503 million for funds closed in 2011 to USD984 million in 2014.
This trend is reinforced
Law firm Ogier in Jersey has acted for the lenders in connection with amendments and an increase to approximately USD6.3 billion to financing provided to the Tullow Oil Group.
The lenders (including BNP Paribas) increased their lending facility by USD450 million, including a USD200 reserved based lending facility and USD250 million corporate credit facility.
Amendments were also made to the facilities to address the risk of potential covenant breach due to oil price volatility and to allow investment in the production and development of assets in West Africa.
The Ogier team was led by partner Chris Byrne with
James Briggs, an independent UK-based aerosol and speciality chemicals manufacturer, has acquired the business and assets of Premiere Products, a manufacturer of branded and private label janitorial cleaning products.
James Briggs can trace its roots back to 1830 and Premiere has a similarly strong heritage in the UK having been supplying products into both the commercial and consumer cleaning sectors since 1924. Premiere is one of the most respected and trusted names in the industry distributing its products widely in the UK and Ireland, but also enjoys strong export sales across Europe and the Middle East, as well as into
Materne-Mont Blanc, a provider of fruit purees and dessert creams sold at ambient temperature in supermarket food departments, backed by LBO France since 2010, has successfully completed a seven year EUR230 million refinancing.
Pom’Potes is the group’s flagship brand for fruit purees sold in pouches, with a leading position among children in the snack segment. The brand developed a first mover advantage in the US, under the name GoGoSqueez.
BNP Paribas acted as Mandated Lead Arranger and Bookrunner of the new EUR230 million tranche B senior financing. The structure includes an additional EUR10 million revolving credit facility as well as
Turner & Townsend, the global programme management and construction consultancy, has acquired Australian project management specialist Thinc, creating a combined company with more than 400 expert staff based in ten locations across Australia.
The acquisition is a key part of Turner & Townsend’s ambitious expansion strategy for Australia, and follows a period of continuous organic growth across the business.
Turner & Townsend is an independent professional services company with 87 offices in 36 countries. Its Australian clients include National Australia Bank, Brisbane Airport, and Transport for NSW, Canberra University and Woolworths.
Thinc has a strong track record of providing strategic
Rural Physicians Group has formed a strategic investment partnership led by Sorenson Capital with additional support from Leavitt Equity Partners.
This partnership will leverage Sorenson Capital’s extensive experience in accelerating growth of high performance companies and Leavitt Equity Partners’ expertise in healthcare, better positioning Rural Physicians Group to dramatically expand its reach and ability to support rural healthcare throughout the United States.
“Rural Physicians Group has a very innovative and thoughtful approach to improving rural healthcare, and we look forward to putting our extensive experience to work in helping the company find new ways to unlock its full potential.”
Rural
OpenFin, a provider of HTML5 runtime technology for the financial industry, has raised USD3.0 million in additional financing.
The round was co-led by Bain Capital Ventures, Pivot Investment Partners and Nyca Partners, with participation from 20 senior financial industry executives including Cris Conde, former CEO of SunGard and Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters. The funds will be used for product development and engineering team expansion in both New York and London.
"Eleven of the world's largest banks and trading platforms are already using OpenFin to run high-performance, multi-window HTML5 applications on sell-side and buy-side desktops," says Mazy Dar,
Investment management sector technology specialist RFA (Richard Fleischman & Associates) has launched a new data governance solution for the alternative asset industry.
The data governance service extends the full functionality previously only offered by enterprise level data governance services to the alternative asset industry at a significantly lower price point.
The RFA Data Governance service reports on permission structures and monitors and logs data access, and generates real time alerts based on the criteria set by the client. Clients located in the United States and the United Kingdom will be able to access the new service in a subscription format
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12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
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