Allocations
Icebreaker.vc, which invests in Finnish, Swedish and Estonian tech companies, has held a first close of its second fund at EUR50 million.
The target size of Icebreaker Fund II, which will invest in very early stage tech companies, is EUR75 million. Already before the Corona crisis there was a gap of investors in this segment since most tech investors focus on later investment rounds, according to the firm.
Investors in the new fund include Finland´s state-owned investment company Tesi and KRR III fund-of-funds, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Oy Julius Tallberg, as well as other
Ropes & Gray has advised K2 Insurance Services, a portfolio company of US private equity firm Lee Equity Partners, on its acquisition of Pioneer Underwriters, a London-headquartered underwriting services organisation.
The deal will see Pioneer’s ongoing underwriting portfolio, together with underwriting and support staff, transfer to K2, a specialist insurance services holding company, headquartered in San Diego. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q2, subject to the necessary regulatory approvals. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
The transferred business will comprise underwriting units specialising in property catastrophe reinsurance, financial institutions, international property facultative and
Ogier’s Jersey investment funds team has advised Index Ventures on the simultaneous closings of Index Ventures Growth V, which has raised USD1.2 billion to invest in later-stage, growth rounds, and Index Ventures X, which recently closed at USD800 million to put into earlier rounds for smaller start-up companies.This latest USD2 billion raise from Index is an increase in fund size on its previous growth and venture fund close (in 2018 it raised USD650 million for venture and USD1 billion for growth), which will enable Index Ventures to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated and international start-ups.
The funds are expected to
Growth equity investor Verdane has partnered with Conscriptor, Sweden’s largest developer of medical journal documentation services and dictation software, and Max Manus, a speech recognition and dictation software company.
Bodhala, a data-intelligence and legal technology platform, has secured USD10 million in an investment round led by Edison Partners, a Princeton, NJ-based growth capital firm.
The company will use the funds for product expansion and sales and market acceleration as it transforms and modernises the purchasing of outside counsel services.
Companies spend nearly USD500 billion annually on outside counsel, with hourly billing rates tracking at almost four times the rate of inflation. Bodhala applies data science, machine learning and AI-driven insights to help companies analyse, interpret and optimise legal spend. The company experienced 300-pls per cent growth in both
Peak, a software maker helping businesses use AI, has raised USD12 million in an extended Series A funding round led by existing investors MMC Ventures and Praetura Ventures.
This fresh investment brings Peak’s total amount of funding to USD18 million. Peak will use the incoming capital to support its rapid growth and commercial expansion, and to ramp up investment in research and development.
Peak is marketing its AI Systems, a new category of enterprise software with the goal of enabling mass adoption of AI solutions across industries. The company says that the AI era is “the fourth industrial revolution”, and
Blackstone’s private equity division saw assets reach USD174.7 billion, while the group’s hedge fund performance fell more than 8 per cent during a torrid first quarter.
But the world’s largest alternative investment manager has grown its overall assets over the past year, and now has USD150 billion in “dry powder” assets to put to work.
The group, which runs a range of hedge fund, private equity, credit, real estate, and alternative products, saw overall assets under management grow to USD538 billion in the 12-month period to the end of March, a 5 per cent year-on-year increase.
Blackstone’s private equity group’s
Cyprium Investment Partners has closed its fifth fund, with USD445 million of committed capital.
Cyprium received support from its limited partners which include insurance companies, asset managers, pension funds, and family offices, many of which have been with the group for two decades.
For the last 22 years, the Cyprium team has been dedicated to providing subordinated debt, preferred stock, and common equity as a minority investor providing tailored solutions directly to family, founder, and entrepreneur-owned companies. Our 90 past investments totalling USD1.6 billion have supported growth, shareholder dividends and buyouts, ESOPs, and minority recapitalisations.
Over the next several months, Cyprium
Keensight Capital, a private equity manager focused on pan-European growth buyouts, has completed the sale of smartTrade, a multi-asset electronic solutions firm.
Earlier this year, Keensight Capital had announced that it had entered into an agreement to exit smartTrade Technologies.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in France, smartTrade Technologies has developed an automated trading platform which enables fast access to a wide range of liquidity for foreign exchange, fixed income, equities, cryptocurrencies, and derivatives.
The final completion of this deal, which gathered parties spreading all over Europe, took place in an innovative, highly secured manner, thanks to a fully
With USD46 billion of dry powder available to deploy through year end, secondaries market activity is expected to increase in H2 2020, according to Cebile Capital’s Q1 2020 secondaries buyer report.
New figures also revealed that the private equity market expects a material decrease in sellers in the secondaries market, which will impact higher pricing in H2 2020.
“The record amount of dry powder available for secondary buyers to deploy coupled with innovative transaction structures will allow for robust secondary market activity in the second half of the year,” said Sunaina Sinha, managing partner at private markets advisor Cebile Capital.
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
