Managers
Car rental company Avis Budget Group has agreed to purchase France Cars, a privately-held vehicle rental company based in France, to significantly expand its presence in the French market. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
The purchase will give Avis Budget Group the second-largest light commercial vehicle fleet in France. It is also a key step in affirming the company's commitment to the local market, further increasing its ability to serve customers of all sizes, from entrepreneurs to multinationals to leisure travellers.
The acquisition will add 8,000 cars, vans and light trucks to the Avis Budget Group fleet
Tikehau IM has held the close of its Tikehau Direct Lending III (TDL III) fund at EUR610 million.
Tikehau IM’s total asset under management in private debt amount to EUR3.3 billion.
Over 40 per cent of the fund is already invested through 15 portfolio companies based in France, Spain and Norway.
Most recent investments include a unitranche financing for the acquisition of Financière Rive Gauche by the ATLAND Group and the acquisition of Marlink, Airbus Group’s commercial satellite communication business, by Apax.
The investor base predominantly includes insurance companies, pension funds, private banks and family offices based
Transportation platform oTMS has raised USD25 million in a Series B funding round led by Chen Weixing, the founder of Kuaidi Dache.
Previous investors Baidu, Chengwei capital and Matrix Partners China also participated in the round. China Renaissance was the exclusive financial advisor of the deal.
The funding will be used to support oTMS's growth, enhance its product depth and breadth, and broaden its national footprint.
"I have seen many logistics internet innovation, the idea of oTMS has truly reflected the core value of the internet by connecting people and companies with cloud and mobile technologies through unique transport ecosystem and
London-based commercial lender Ortus Secured Finance has closed a second funding round for its new fund, increasing its firepower by GBP20 million from investors and bringing total lending capacity for the fund to GBP60 million.
The fund, which was originally launched in February 2016, lends to businesses across the UK, with a particular focus on the UK leisure sector.
The second round of funding has seen a number of original investors increase their initial stakes in the fund. It has also welcomed a new GBP5 million cornerstone investment from a global real estate investor.
The fund will continue
Modern Energy Management (MEM), a specialist in delivering project lifecycle certainty to renewable energy developers, financiers and investors, has been engaged to work on behalf of CapAsia’s Islamic Infrastructure Fund (IIF) at two early wind farms in Pakistan.
Under the terms of the contract, MEM, led by founding partner Lars Lund, is providing asset management, human resources and technical advisory services to the private equity fund, which focuses on developing infrastructure projects in emerging Asian markets.
Pakistan has an ambitious wind energy development pipeline and over 1GW of new capacity is scheduled for installation by 2018. With the number
Smart Communications, a specialist in enterprise customer and business communications, has completed its spinoff from Thunderhead and launched as an independent company led by its existing management team and backed by tech-focused private equity firm Accel-KKR.
As an independent company, Smart Communications will continue to define and lead the next generation of cloud-enabled customer communications management (CCM) by focusing on scaling its growth in new and existing markets, broadening its industry reach, and accelerating innovation and product development.
Smart Communications’ blue-chip customer base spans three continents and includes over 300 customers from a diverse range of industry sectors, including
Growth private equity firm TA Associates is to back a management buyout (MBO) of Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s (GSAM) Australian-focused investment capabilities and fund platform.
Financial terms of the transaction, which is expected to close by year-end, have not been disclosed. The company will rebrand accordingly.
Since the appointment of Dion Hershan as GSAM’s head of Australia equities in 2007 and the subsequent build out of the investment team, the company has grown to be a leading Australian equities and fixed income fund manager.
The company’s core offering is its Fundamental Australian Equities product set, consisting primarily of
Over three quarters (79 per cent) of venture capital trusts (VCTs) have a fund manager who has been in position for 10 years or more, according to research by the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).
The AIC says this is an impressive figure given that VCTs were only introduced 21 years ago.
Tim Levett is the longest serving VCT manager, having managed Northern Venture Trust for almost 21 years. He is closely followed by Patrick Reeve who has managed Albion VCT for over 20 years.
Both managers feature an additional two times in the list: Levett for managing
Arma Partners has acted as exclusive financial adviser on the sale of Attenda, a portfolio company of Darwin Private Equity, to Ensono, a portfolio company of Charlesbank Capital Partners and M/C Partners.
Attenda is a UK provider of hybrid IT managed services, specialising in running business critical applications.
The acquisition will achieve greater scale and visibility for the combined business, accelerating Ensono’s entry into the UK market.
It will also strengthen Ensono’s offerings across public cloud, dedicated infrastructure and mainframe, to meet the demands of its global client base.
Alternative fund platform Kuber Ventures has warned financial advisors that the EIS market will face significant capacity constraints in 2017.
The firm writes that this will result in missed investment opportunities if investors do not bring forward their due diligence process. Kuber Ventures has identified that recent changes in legislation, specifically those removing the ability to invest in renewable energy production within an EIS investment structure, have reduced the market capacity of investible opportunities by an estimated GBP500 million for the year 2016/17. In previous years, the energy sector would account for approximately a third of the total GBP1.6 billion
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
