Allocations
Investment bank Greenhill & Co is to acquire Cogent Partners, a financial advisor to pension funds, endowments and other institutional investors on the secondary market for alternative assets.
Cogent advises such institutions on sales of interests in private equity and similar funds, as well as providing restructuring, financing, valuation and related advisory services. Cogent has advised on transactions involving thousands of limited partnership interests since its founding in 2002, and had revenues of approximately $45.8 million (unaudited) in 2014. The acquisition advances Greenhill's ambition to create the leading independent global financial advisory firm, with capabilities to advise clients on
Private equity firm Idinvest Partners has launched its third SME senior debt fund, Idinvest Dette Senior III (IDS III). The fund aims to raise EUR500 million.
With this new fund, Idinvest Partners is strengthening its private debt activities, where it now has more than EUR1.3 billion of assets under management. In 2014, Idinvest raised EUR395 million through its IDS II fund, of which 60% has now been invested. The first IDS fund, launched in 2013, had raised EUR281 million.
Commenting on this launch, Eric Gallerne, Partner, says: “The Idinvest Dette Senior III fund will invest in the acquisition debt instruments
Guernsey’s Chief Minister, Jonathan Le Tocq, has held a series of meetings in Washington to boost the Island’s reputation as a leading international finance centre.
A week after Guernsey and the USA signed an asset sharing agreement, the Chief Minister met with officials from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).
Dominic Wheatley, Chief Executive of Guernsey Finance – the promotional agency for the Island’s finance industry, says: “Guernsey’s finance industries have long had strong links with the USA and we very much welcome the Chief Minister’s visit.
The vote by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on 27 November 2014 to not reduce oil production levels was widely publicized and had a significant effect on managed futures and CTAs throughout Q4 2014, particularly on funds with a focus on trading oil. Throughout this period, the Brent Crude Oil price index fell by nearly 40%, from $94.80 at the close of September to $57.55 on 31 December. It is clear that the volatility of this commodity provided opportunities for funds implementing short strategies but exposed those unable to navigate the market.
As the chart below illustrates,
Lionpoint Group has launched a new service to help alternative investments clients address manager and investor requirements for greater transparency of underlying portfolio companies and investment holdings.
Primary services include process optimisation, operational efficiency improvements and the implementation of enabling technologies to support the collection, validation, normalisation, performance reporting and analytics associated with underlying holdings in Private Capital, with a focus on Private Equity, Real Estate and Infrastructure. Offerings also include support with risk and compliance monitoring as well as Portfolio Company and underlying investment valuations.
While remaining product agnostic, the Lionpoint Group team has solution expertise with products including AssetEye,
International investment bank Altium has rounded off another active year, completing over 50 deals and pushing the total deal value for the firm in the last three years past GBP9bn.
In the UK, the firm has seen exceptional levels of growth, with deal values up 94 per cent in 2014. Notable transactions from the period include The Riverside Company buying a majority stake in specialist accountancy firm Brookson and the sale of Scientific Analysis Laboratories (SAL) to the newly formed Concept Life Sciences, which is backed by Equistone. Most recently, Altium advised on the GBP303.7m takeover of Italian restaurant chain
NEXTracker, Inc., designer and manufacturer of single axis PV trackers, has completed USD25 million in equity and growth capital financing.
The funding round, which closed in December, includes investments from SJF Ventures, Tennenbaum Capital Partners and earlier investors Sigma Partners and DBL Investors. NEXTracker, based in Silicon Valley, provides state-of-the-art solar trackers that maximize system energy output while reducing installation and operating costs, resulting in substantially increased solar project profits.
“SJF Ventures is thrilled to partner with NEXTracker,” says managing director and co-founder Dave Kirkpatrick. “NEXTracker is led by successful solar veterans who have developed new tracking systems
The commercial law firm Noerr has advised and assisted Oakley Capital in its acquisition of majority stakes in the German and Polish subsidiaries owned and operated by the consulting and systems company Damovo.
Damovo is specialised in integrated solutions in the field of unified communications and collaboration (UCC).
The buyer is the fund “Oakley Capital Private Equity II”, which is acquiring the shares from Damovo II. Besides the German and Polish operations, Oakley is also acquiring Damovo’s operations in Belgium, Ireland and Switzerland as well as Damovo’s Global Services business. The British telecommunications provider Daisy Group is also investing
Prudential Capital Group provided more than USD11.3 billion to companies and projects worldwide, and increased its total assets under management to a record high of USD71.6 billion in 2014.
Additionally, the company announced that it has the capacity to provide more than USD12 billion in financing in 2015. Prudential Capital Group is an investment business of Prudential Financial Inc.
“Our ability to offer a financial capability that meets the needs of middle market companies around the world was a driving factor in helping us achieve a strong 2014,” says Allen A Weaver, senior managing director and head of Prudential Capital
ClusterHQ has secured a USD12 million Series A funding round led by Accel Partners London, with participation from Canaan Partners as well as existing investors.
DN Capital seeded the fund in 2013 and participated in this follow-on round where ClusterHQ will use the funds to expand technical and go-to-market resources to help organisations use containers in production. The funding represents the largest Series A investment in the container ecosystem to date.
With five years' experience solving data problems for container-based applications, ClusterHQ is the company behind Flocker, the popular open-source project for containerising stateful services – for example, the databases,
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
