August & Debouzy has advised France Economie Régions (FER) on its bid to take over the French newspaper La Tribune.   France Economie Régions’ majority shareholder, the Hima Group, teamed up with the Hi-media Group, chaired by its founder, Cyril Zimmermann, for the bid.   The business plan consists in combining continuous online news coverage (via a quality website) with the publication of a weekly newspaper every Friday. This was the only bid submitted to the court to plan for the development of both media formats, to ensure greater visibility for the paper. Another important aspect of the bid was the

Private equity firm Warburg Pincus has acquired majority ownership in FacilitySource, a provider of facility maintenance and management solutions to retailers and other multi-site operators. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. FacilitySource manages over 60,000 facilities worldwide via an elite service provider network, representing over USD1 billion in aggregated spend each year. The company has grown rapidly since taking its solution to market in 2005, averaging 25-30% growth in each year. FacilitySource is poised to accelerate this growth with the backing of Warburg Pincus. "FacilitySource provides a unique value proposition to its customers and continues to innovate in

A company owned by Permira, the European private equity firm, has successfully completed the acquisition of Genesys, a global expert in contact centre technology software, from Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU). Technology Crossover Ventures and certain co-investors of the Permira funds also participated in the transaction. The transaction values the company at USD1.5 billion. With the backing of the investor group, Genesys will continue to provide market-leading contact centre products and solutions to clients around the world while enhancing its core product portfolio and strengthening its offering in the growing areas of cloud computing, analytics, workforce optimization, process workflow

Domo, a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) venture launched by Omniture co-founder Josh James, has closed USD20 million in Series A-1 funding from Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). This round brings total investment in Domo to USD63 million.   “Winning takes 100 percent focus,” says James. “While we weren’t in the market for additional funding, the capital from a trusted and experienced partner such as IVP made a lot of sense. We’ve experienced positive feedback from the marketplace. This move fills the coffers and enables us to stay focused on execution. It also provides flexibility as we build out our sales organisation and

Better Capital has sold MentecPlus Integrated Solutions Limited (MentecPlus), a company within the BECAP Fund LP (the 2009 Fund) investment portfolio, to UNIT4 Business Software Holding BV (UNIT4), a NYSE Euronext-listed company. MentecPlus was acquired as part of the Calyx group of ICT managed services companies in September 2010. As the authorised distributor in Ireland for the Agresso Business World suite of business software products, MentecPlus has a long-established relationship with UNIT4 (the author of Agresso). MentecPlus, with 167 customers, is a leading provider of business software solutions to both SMEs and Public Sectors in the Republic and Northern Ireland.

The Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (IVCA) is partnering with Cambridge Associates to provide extensive, independent Indian private equity and venture capital performance data to industry participants. As part of the strategic partnership, IVCA will give its members access to aggregate Indian private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) benchmark data and statistics, once launched. Cambridge Associates, a global provider of independent research and investment advice, derives PE and VC benchmarks from the financial information in its proprietary database of institutional-quality PE and VC funds, which is one of the largest such data repositories in the world, and

Global economic uncertainty and regulatory change will continue to impact M&A activity in the coming year, according to the latest trends insights by Clifford Chance. Worries about sovereign debt, global economic slowdown and the continued lack of a resolution to the Eurozone crisis are contributing to an unsettled global picture. However M&A is continuing despite the challenging environment, and in some areas, Clifford Chance expects to see significantly more confidence in doing deals as the year progresses.   Matthew Layton, Global Head of Corporate at Clifford Chance, says: “The first half of last year showed that there is an appetite

AlienVault, creator of OSSIM, the de-facto standard open source SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution, has closed an USD8 million Series B financing led by new investor Trident Capital with participation from existing investors Adara Venture Partners and Neotec. The company has named Trident managing director J Alberto Yepez Chairman of the Board. Trident principal Michael Biggee also joins the AlienVault Board of Directors. The funding will be used to accelerate research and development and aggressively expand sales and marketing to meet increasing demand for unified security management from around the world. AlienVault also recently announced the appointment of