Allocations
Vitruvian Partners (Vitruvian) has closed Vitruvian Investment Partnership IV (VIP IV) at its hard cap of EUR4.0 billion. The hard cap was reached in under three months from formal launch of the fundraising.VIP IV is one of the largest funds focused on supporting high growth companies in the middle market. With a primary focus in Europe, the Fund has global reach with the ability to support businesses seeking assistance with international expansion. Vitruvian is able to provide this global reach through its network of offices across Europe and satellite offices in the US and China.
VIP IV reached the hard
Office Depot Europe, a portfolio company of Aurelius Equity Opportunities has agreed to sell its Spanish direct business unit, which runs on the commercial brand Viking, to strategic buyer Bruneau Spain, a subsidiary of the French Bruneau Group. Bruneau is a leading mail order company for office supplies headquartered in Villebon sur Yvette, France. Office Depot Europe will hereby completely exit the Spanish market following the successful sale of its Spanish contract business unit on 23 July, 2020. Financial details have not been disclosed.
Bruneau will integrate the business into its existing platform and further develop it. The business has excellent
Ardian has acquired a majority stake in Finaxy, a French multi-specialist B2B and B2C insurance broker, from European mid-market private equity firm, Equistone Partners Europe.Founded in 2009 under the leadership of Erick Berville, Finaxy has become a top 10 insurance broker in France following Equistone’s acquisition of a majority stake in the Group in 2014. With a strategic positioning focused on B2C niches and specific B2B business expertise, the Group has successfully leveraged its know-how to build a third offering dedicated to insurers and bank insurers. Since its inception, the Group has delivered strong organic growth and an active buy-and-build
BGF’s total H1 investment stands at GBP177 million, including GBP128 million into new portfolio companies and GBP49 million into existing portfolio companies.
BGF backed 24 new companies in the first half of 2020, while completing eight exits. Some of its latest deals include British ceramics manufacturing company Emma Bridgewater, Bayfield and AIM-listed The City Pub Group in London.
“Covid-19 is already having a dramatic impact on the economy with growing unemployment and real concern about rising insolvencies as furlough ends and recessionary conditions hold sway,” said Stephen Welton, executive chairman at BGF.
“BGF as a business has maintained full employment
CORE Industrial Partners (CORE), a Chicago-based private equity firm, has formed a new platform called Incodema Holdings and completed the acquisitions of Incodema, a precision sheet metal engineering solutions provider, and Newchem (Newcut), a photo chemical etching manufacturer. The Company specialises in micro, intricate parts and serves customers from prototype through high-volume production.
Founded in 2001, Incodema offers a broad array of internal sheet metal cutting and forming solutions, including laser, micro waterjet, specialty stamping, multislide and welding, among others, that allow Incodema to generate typical turnaround times of 6-8 days for complex, tight tolerance parts. Further, with the capability to
The Riverside Company, a private equity firm focused on the smaller end of the middle market, has invested in GSB & Associates(GSB), a flavour house specialising in custom flavour development. The company has a diverse portfolio of liquid and powdered flavours, as well as complementary products such as masking agents and flavour enhancers. The company will be the first add-on to one of Riverside’s most recent portfolio companies, National flavours (NF).
“Combining NF and GSB will broaden both companies’ product portfolios, providing customers with access to additional flavour development capabilities,” says Riverside Managing Partner Loren Schlachet. “During our hold period, we
PROfounders Capital and Calm/Storm Ventures have invested GBP1 million into sex therapy app Blueheart.
The fresh capital will be used to expand the available suite of therapy sessions and advance therapeutic research, as well as improving the app’s AI capabilities.
The app provides sex and relationship therapy based on the latest scientific research via sessions designed by sex therapist Dr Katherine Hertlein, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy. Dr Hertlein is joining Blueheart as their expert advisor.
The Blueheart app deals with three main areas: thought sessions that focus on sexual fears and anxieties; body sessions,
European venture capital (VC) deal value registered the third largest quarterly figure on record in Q2, an incredible achievement amid widespread economic uncertainty, according to data released by PitchBook.Pitchbook’s Q2 2020 European Venture Report reveals that, across Europe, investment in sectors brought to the forefront by the coronavirus pandemic such as food delivery, mobility, software and biotech remained particularly strong even as companies were forced to adapt operations or shift to remote workforces. Corporations, seeing opportunity in tech-focused businesses like cybersecurity, helped VC deals with CVC participation in H1 2020 keep pace with the tear away record set in 2019.
Humanloop, a UCL spinout, has attracted investment from UCL’s Technology Fund (UCLTF). Based on the world-leading research of two notable academics at UCL’s AI Centre Humanloop is teaching AI to improve performance with 10 times less human training than existing systems.The UCLTF has invested in Humanloop to help the team, which includes Professors David Barber and Emine Yilmaz, to build software that can train AI models to reach high levels of accuracy while using smaller datasets through better interaction with their human users.
The potential of AI is still far from being realised. Current AI performance is severely limited
Foresight Group (Foresight), an independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager, and Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), have announced a GBP1.45 million follow-on investment from the Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund into Inovo Robotics (Inovo).This investment will allow the Company to grow sales internationally and brings the total invested by the Fund to GBP2.95 million, having originally invested GBP1.5 million in October 2018 to support the Company’s first product to market.
Inovo was founded in 2016 by Henry Wood and Jonathan Cheung, both former senior engineers at defence technology company, Northrup Grumman. The Company is developing a competitively priced “cobot”, a
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12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
