Managers
Schroders Capital has reached the EUR1 billion hard cap fundraising target for the Schroder Euro Enhanced Infrastructure Debt Fund II (JULIE II).
The fund, which is managed by Schroders Capital’s specialist infrastructure team, was launched in Q3 2020 and invests in European sub-investment grade infrastructure debt opportunities. The fundraising has been evenly split between Asian and European investors.
Today’s news follows shortly after an update in June which confirmed that more than EUR700 million had been raised. The fund is the second vintage of this strategy whose first fund (JULIE I) was launched in 2017, raising close to EUR350 million.
XPhyto Therapeutics Corp is to acquire 3a-diagnostics, Frickenhausen, Germany (3a), the company’s exclusive diagnostics development partner.
Pursuant to the definitive agreement, XPhyto will acquire all of the outstanding shares of 3a for EUR400,000, to be paid immediately, and EUR3.5 million, to be paid on closing, planned for on or around 31 October, 2021.
Hugh Rogers, CEO of XPhyto, says: “We have collaborated closely with the 3a-diagnostics team on several diagnostics products and have found them to be a highly innovative and focused partner. The successful development and recent launch of the 25-minute PCR test Covid-ID Lab is a great example
Panakès Partners, an leading Italian venture capital firm focused on the Life Sciences sector, has held the first closing of its EUR150 million (USD180 million) Purple Fund, the firm’s second fund.
Panakès’ Purple Fund is currently the largest venture capital fund actively investing in Italian companies and the most significant fund dedicated wholly to the Life Sciences sector in Italy. The fund will invest in companies at the forefront of innovation, with a focus on Europe, and Italy in particular, which remains underserved in terms of Venture Capital funding.
The Purple Fund is the second venture capital fund dedicated to
Ntropy, a company aiming to remove the data barriers to understanding financial transactions, has closed a USD3.2 million seed round led by QED Investors, who has previously invested in fintech unicorns Nubank, Klarna, and Current.
Ntropy’s API enables businesses to convert raw data into contextualised and structured information understood by both man and machine.
January Ventures also participated in the investment round, along with founders and executives from Ramp, Square and Stripe. Ntropy has also added Eric Woodward, former Group President of Early Warnings, and Robert Phillps, author of Pricing Credit Products, and currently Director of pricing research at Amazon,
Keensight Capital, a private equity manager dedicated to pan-European Growth Buyout investments, is to sell, alongside the founder, its stake in ASTI, a global autonomous mobile robotics (AMR) manufacturer, to ABB.
Founded in 1982, ASTI supports one of Europe’s largest installed fleets of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and has a broad customer base in automotive, logistics, food & beverage, and pharmaceutical in 20 countries worldwide. Since 2015, the company has enjoyed ~30 per cent growth on an annual basis and is targeting approximately USD50 million in orders in 2021. ASTI employs over 300 people in Spain, France and Germany.
ASTI’s
The majority (62 per cent) of GPs have declined to invest in a company due to ESG or ethical considerations in 2021, according to Investec’s annual GP Trends survey. Last year, this figure stood at 55 per cent, showing the continued and growing importance of ESG to GPs.
Investec’s research, which analyses the views of 219 private equity professionals around the world, shows that GPs’ focus on ESG varies considerably according to factors such as seniority within their firms, gender, and the size and type of fund.
ESG considerations have ‘significantly contributed’ to the decision not to invest in a
The recent IPO of online building products retailer CMO Group PLC rounded off a busy and productive 12 months for private equity firm Key Capital Partners(KCP). The flotation represented the firm’s third high-value exit in the last 12 months; coming hot on the heels of the sale of nursing business Routes Healthcare (North) to Palatine Private Equity in June and IT training and consultancy firm Sparta Global to Inflexion in October.
In aggregate, the three exits delivered total proceeds of GBP96 million to the firm’s eighth fund; a combined money multiple of 5.8-times KCP’s total investment in the three deals.
Global investment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) has acquired LiveU, a specialist in live video streaming and remote production solutions, from Francisco Partners, a global investment firm that specialises in partnering with technology businesses.
Details of the transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals, have not been disclosed.
Founded in 2006, LiveU is the pioneer of a bonded cellular technology-based live video transmission platform, offered to major live broadcast news networks and sports content owners globally. LiveU’s technology enables customers to apply innovation and automation to the entire production workflow. LiveU provides an end-to-end solution combining mission-critical acquisition, cloud production
Vantage Health has been acquired by Northgate Public Services (NPS), a leading software and services provider to the public sector in the UK and a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation.
NPS has a market leading screening software for diabetes and hearing. It has helped to screen 10 million babies for the Newborn Hearing Screening Program in England and Northern Ireland, tested 500,000 patients with diabetes for retina damage and supports a number of medical registries such as the National Joint Registry (NJR), the largest orthopaedics registry in the world, and the international spinal registry platform, Spine Tango to help
EQT’s EQT Exeter Europe Logistics Value Fund IV has held its final close at its hard cap of EUR2.1 billion in fee-paying assets under management.
Demand from both existing and new investors was exceptional resulting in the Fund being significantly oversubscribed with commitments coming from a diversified group of high-quality investors across North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The fund will pursue a value-add strategy to acquire, develop, redevelop, lease, operate and sell supply chain and e-commerce focused big box warehouse, last mile and light industrial properties serving major markets throughout Europe. EQT Exeter has employed similar value-add
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