Managers
Actis has acquired a significant minority stake in Coricraft Group, one of South Africa’s leading home furnishings retailers.
Actis is investing alongside majority shareholders Westbrooke a local investment group – and Coricraft Group management.
Actis focuses exclusively on investments in emerging markets across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The firm has a strong track record of backing high-quality, consumer-focused businesses in Africa including South Africa’s leading independent sports retailer, Tekkie Town, fabric design company Vlisco Group, and snack food group Edita. To date Actis has invested USD1.6 billion in the consumer sector.
Commenting on the investment, Natalie Kolbe
San Francisco-based venture capital firm Cloud Apps Capital Partners has announced its market-focused investment strategy targeting early-stage companies in the cloud business applications sector, and its first fund.
Founded by former salesforce.com executive and venture capitalist Matt Holleran (pictured), the firm takes an innovative approach to supporting early-stage companies. Leveraging more than 20 years of combined investing and operating experience in the business applications market, Cloud Apps Capital Partners is able to help portfolio companies with market-specific expertise and a rich network of cloud industry executives and experts.
“TIFF is focused on offering our endowment and foundation clients access to
With 128 listings on European exchanges raising EUR31.3bn in the year to July 2015, the continent’s IPO market is in robust health despite economic and political hurdles, according to a new report from the Mergermarket Group.
Deals still in the pipeline could see this year beat 2014’s bumper EUR42bn issuance.
Banks have pointed to positive aftermarket results vs 2014, with all top 10 European listings still in green territory one month after listing.
If markets stabilise post the China sell-off, some large deals are in prospect for the remainder of 2015, with Poste Italiane and ABM AMRO looking to
Conztanz, a software editor in the Aviation sector, has completed its first fundraising of EUR2 million with A Plus Finance and Pléiade Venture to finance its R&D activity and business development.
Created in July 2013 and located in Sophia-Antipolis in the heart of the French Silicon Valley, Conztanz intends to respond to complex IT problems of the airline industry by offering a wide range of software and services. The three founders created Conztanz at the end of 2012 when they realised that airlines and airports lack a greater knowledge of their travellers’ experience and are missing the opportunities provided by
Following a recent investment from private equity house Equistone Partners Europe, WEALTH at work has made its first strategic acquisition.
WEALTH at work, itself a leading provider of financial education, guidance and advice in the workplace, has acquired a direct competitor – Life Academy, the education and employee engagement programme provider based in Newport, Wales.
The acquisition sees WEALTH at work increasing its footprint in the market at a time when demand is increasing significantly due to the recent pension changes, which is driving organisations to provide comprehensive pre and at retirement financial education and advice for their employees.
Montagu Private Equity has close its fifth fund (Montagu V) at EUR2.75 billion, reaching the hard cap set for the fund.
Montagu V has been able to attract a broad mix of investors by type and geographical mix, including increased commitments from pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds across the USA, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The first close for the fund was held on 30 June 2015 having reached EUR2.2bn in investor commitments.
Jason Gatenby (pictured), Chief Executive of Montagu Private Equity, says: “We are delighted to have completed the fundraising in such a timely manner,
DreamBox Learning has closed USD10 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Owl Ventures and includes investment from Tao Capital Partners.
The company also announced the addition of Tory Patterson (pictured), co-founder and managing partner of Owl Ventures, to its Board of Directors. Patterson currently serves on the board of directors of other prominent EdTech companies including Newsela, MasteryConnect, and LearnZillion. Patterson joins an impressive group of current DreamBox Learning Board of Directors, which includes: Reed Hastings, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Netflix; Kevin Hall, CEO and President of the Charter School Growth Fund; Paul Holland, General
Aurelius Mittelstandskapital (Aurelius), the SME focussed investment arm of Aurelius Group, has acquired the privately owned company, Emsdetten-based ARBAprocessing Group for an undisclosed sum.
ARBAprocessing Group is a leading European manufacturer of containers and collection vehicles for the dairy industry. Long-serving Managing Director and majority shareholder Reinhold Barlian will step down with immediate effect. The transaction is subject to the completion of regulatory clearances.
The ARBAprocessing Group consists of two operating units:
Schwarte and Milfor brands – This unit engineers, designs and produces storage and process containers for the dairy, food, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals industries. Working out of five locations
Mid-market private equity house LDC has exited its investment in oil and gas engineering business Bifold Group to Rotork.
Bifold is a designer, manufacturer and distributor of valves and pumps to the oil and gas sector with sites in Manchester and Taunton, as well as Houston and Singapore. The GBP125m transaction delivers a 2.4x money return for LDC.
In 2014, Bifold moved into new ‘state-of-the-art’ 30,000 sq ft manufacturing facilities in Oldham, Greater Manchester, to increase capacity and its technical capabilities. It completed the acquisition of Orange Instruments, which offers the business access to a range of specialist control system
MagicCube announced has raised USD2.2 million in a seed round of funding from Azure Capital, Epic Ventures, as well as Bialla Venture Partners and private investors.
MagicCube’s software-only technology secures digital transactions on any mobile device, independent of its hardware or operating system, stopping digital transaction fraud where most vulnerabilities can be found today – at the endpoint.
“Commerce is rapidly evolving and migrating to digital channels. As innovation continues to accelerate, the traditional approach of securing devices with hardware-based solutions has become impractical and costly for the entire ecosystem,” says Sam Shawki (pictured), CEO and co-founder of MagicCube.
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
