Australian corporate boards are now more receptive to engaging with private equity firms than they have been at any time in the past ten years, according to Michael Blickstead, Blackstone Inc’s head of private equity in Australia & New Zealand.

Private investment hose Ardian has become Ownership Works’ first European-based partner, allowing the firm to support and extend the impact of its existing practice of profit sharing and implementing other value sharing schemes in its portfolio companies.

Private equity investor Palatine has been awarded B Corp certification, reflecting its efforts to deliver sustainable business growth, and its role in sustainable investing.  B Corporations (B Corps) are businesses that demonstrate the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability through an assessment process.    Palatine scored 111.3 out of a possible 200 in the B Impact Assessment, making it the fourth highest-scoring private equity firm in Europe to obtain the accreditation. The B Impact Assessment examines applicants across factors including governance, workers, community, environment and customers. Businesses need to score 80 or above to be accredited. 

LGT Capital Partners, a global alternative investment specialist, has opened a San Francisco office. The firm, which has $80 billion in assets under management, has been investing in North America since its inception in 1997 and currently has US offices in New York and Raleigh, North Carolina.

The fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now bankrupt FTX empire continues with another digital assets startup, BlockFi Inc, announcing it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to a repot by Pensions & Investments Online. And a host of VC funds are among investors likely to be impacted by the collapse with the report citing Preqin data as revealing that early funding rounds in the company, which was founded by in 2017 by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez, included PJC, ConsenSys Ventures, Galaxy Asset Management, Social Finance, Alumni Ventures Group, Lumenary and Kenetic Capital. The company also

Venture capital major Sequoia Capital has apologised to investors for the loss for its entire $150 million investment in failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, according to a report by Private Equity News. The firm was forced to write down the investment in its entirety after the sudden collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s digital assets empire after is struggled to meet a wave of withdrawals. The report cites unnamed sources as revealing that the apology came during a call to investors with Sequoia announcing plans to tighten up its due diligence process for future investments saying it believed it had been misled by

Private equity firms and other alternative managers handling unlisted assets have been warned by the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, whose members represent more than $11 trillion in assets, not to fall behind the rest of the investment industry in reducing financed emissions, according to a report by Bloomberg. The report cites a recent report published by the United Nations-convened alliance, whose list of members includes Aviva Plc, California Public Employees’ Retirement System and Swiss Re AG, as revealing that it is calling on private asset managers to “raise their level of climate ambition”.  The alliance has highlighted what it sees

ADIA and SC Capital have formed a new partnership to invest up to $2 billion in data centres across the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report by Bloomberg, with the investment programme to be managed by SC Zeus Data Centres, a pan-Asian platform developed by SCCP in February.  In addition, ADIA will also invest in SC Capital’s pan-Asian opportunistic investment strategy fund. The investment programme will focus on investments in Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Australia. ADIA, one of Abu Dhabi’s two sovereign wealth funds, manages assets in excess of $708 billion, while SCCP has been investing across the Asia