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Managers

Palatine Private Equity has completed the successful sale of Westleigh to Countryside Properties, achieving over a three-times return and 90 per cent IRR within less than two years of making the original investment. Westleigh is the largest independent housebuilder in the Midlands focusing on the delivery of affordable homes to Registered Providers (RPs). Palatine originally invested in Westleigh in July 2016in what was the private equity firm’s first investment from its Midlands office.   Founded in 1985, by husband and wife Chris and Judy Beighton, Westleigh has experienced significant growth since Palatine invested, increasing EBITDA from GBP9 million in the
Bob Dorsey, Ultimus
Ultimus Fund Solutions has acquired Woodfield Fund Administration, a privately-owned private fund administration firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Ultimus says that the combination will allow each firm to better leverage technology investments, resources and assets, providing current and prospective clients the opportunity to access a larger range of services from one combined firm with a hallmark of exceptional client service. After the acquisition, the firm will serve over 140 clients with nearly 200 employees, and Ultimus’ assets under administration will grow to more than USD75 billion. Ultimus, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, will also maintain offices in Chicago, Illinois and Denver,
GP Global (Formerly Gulf Petrochem Group) has completed its acquisition of MAG Lube in the United Arab Emirates. MAG Lube is a manufacturer of lubricants in the Middle East, distributing its full range of lubricants in more than 40 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. GP Global has acquired a majority stake of MAG Lube LLC, a company valued at close to USD75m, in a global lubricants market said to reach USD166.23 billion by 2025 according to Grand View Research, expanding at a 3.8 per cent CAGR during the forecast period.   The current CEO, Mahmoud Al Theraawi,
European law firm Noerr generated more than EUR200 million in Germany in 2017 for the first time. The overall revenue of the firm also increased and reached a record level of almost EUR223 million. This growth was in particular driven by the strategic growth areas of Corporate/M&A and Litigation.   Investments, such as the opening of an office in Hamburg, the further strengthening of the firm’s leading role in the area of digitalisation, and a successful HR policy, made a decisive contribution to this success.   The firm’s overall revenues increased by 7.5 per cent to EUR222.6m (prior year: EUR207.2m);
WILsquare Capital, a St. Louis-based private equity firm has completed the acquisition of Quest Solutions (Quest). Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. “WILsquare Capital is extremely pleased to partner with the management team of Quest to continue investing in providing specialised solutions to the insurance industry,” says Bill Willhite, Managing Partner at WILsquare Capital. “Quest’s leadership team has built a tremendous reputation based on a customer centric service model and strong cultural values, which permeate throughout the organisation.”   As an industry leader in partnering with large insurance companies and fleet companies, Quest provides Emergency Roadside Services (ERS),
Birmingham-based Redbeard, a firm that develops code for Apple (iOS) apps has secured investment from the British Robotics Seed Fund (BRSF). The BRSF has provided GBP80,000 funding alongside GBP50,000 from private investors. Monies will be used to expand the company’s global development community and Code Store.   The investment sees Redbeard join the BRSF’s portfolio of UK firms in robotics and machine learning related fields, from Zoa Robotics to Botskill and Tethered Drone Systems.   The Redbeard Code Store provides source code of complete end-to-end apps and trusted template code developed fully by its in-house team saving users time and
Instapage, a landing page and post-click optimisation solution for digital advertisers, has closed a USD15 million growth investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, the growth-focused private investment platform within Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Investment funds will allow Instapage to accelerate the enterprise adoption of the Instapage post-click optimisation solution, expedite platform development to further help large-scale marketers and advertisers improve ROI, and expand sales and client service operations.   Instapage was founded in 2012 to address the digital marketer’s problem that 96 per cent of ad clicks do not convert by streamlining the process of deploying unique landing pages. Since
Sixpoint Partners, a global investment bank serving the middle market, has closed the Huron Flex Equity Fund with USD142 million of total capital commitments. The Huron Flex Fund, which is the sixth investment vehicle for Huron Capital Partners (Huron Capital) since 1999, easily surpassed its initial target of USD100 million after only seven months in the market. Similar to Huron Capital’s other funds, The Huron Flex Fund’s diversified investor base includes endowments, foundations, multi-manager funds, corporate pensions and family offices. The Huron Flex Fund received strong support from existing Huron Capital investors as well as a number of new LP
Expel, a company that replaces what organisations spend on managed security service providers (MSSPs), announced it has secured USD20 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm investing in the future of work. Ariel Tseitlin, a partner at Scale Venture Partners, will join Expel’s board of directors. Scale joins Expel’s existing investors: Battery Ventures, Greycroft, Lightbank, NEA, Paladin Capital Group and Profile Capital Management – all of whom also participated. Including this round, Expel has secured a total of USD27.5 million in funding to date.   “Security is now a board-level concern.
The EQT Infrastructure III fund (EQT Infrastructure) has completed its majority stake investment in Spirit Communications. With the transaction complete, Spirit will be combined with Lumos, which was acquired in November 2017. The combination of Spirit and Lumos creates a super-regional fibre network stretching from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, with the vast majority of revenue and fibre network concentrated in the high-growth markets of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Together, Spirit and Lumos will operate a network of approximately 21,000 fibre route miles and well over one million total fibre strand miles. The combined business will have over 9,000 on-net

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