Managers
Idinvest Partners, an investor in SMEs across Europe, has held the final closing of its second capital growth fund (Idinvest Growth Fund II) at EUR340 million, surpassing its initial target of EUR300 million.
Idinvest Growth Fund II brings together a panel of renowned investors, of whom more than 75 per cent are based outside France.
Since its launch in 2017, the fund has invested 50 per cent of its total commitments across 15 companies, including Ogury, Secret Escapes, Klaxoon, Vestiaire Collective, and Sophia Genetics.
Idinvest Growth Fund II (IGF II) invests in businesses with strong potential that have
Abacus Group, a provider of IT services for alternative investment firms, has completed the acquisition of competitor Proactive Technologies. The two companies will merge under the Abacus Group umbrella.
Since its founding in 2007, Proactive has grown to service over 120 alternative investment clients, mostly in the New York City area. As a result of the acquisition, Abacus Group, which as of year-end 2018 services over 400 clients across the US and the UK, will now be the largest IT managed service provider specialised in alternative investment firms in the New York metropolitan region, based on client count. For year-end
STAR Capital Partnership (STAR Capital) is to acquire ASL Aviation Holdings. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ASL Holdings is a global aviation services provider with operations on six continents.
The Group’s multiple airlines provide ASL with wide-ranging traffic rights and valuable slots at key airports across Europe, Asia and Africa.
ASL’s airlines operate scheduled and charter flights under their own brands and operate passenger and cargo networks on behalf of major international customers including express freight integrators and passenger airlines.
STAR Capital has reached agreement with ASL Holdings shareholders, Compagnie Maritime Belge (51 per cent) and 3P Air Freighters
French private equity investor Siparex recorded a fifth consecutive year of growth in 2018, with business brisk across all of the company’s operating segments.
The Group met or exceeded its targets, with EUR235 million in investments and EUR260 million in exits. All five lines of business (Midmarket, Midcap, Small Cap, Innovation, and Mezzanine financing), spanning the entire corporate growth cycle, have contributed to this strong expansion over the past several years. Assets under management have steadily increased over the past decade, to EUR2 billion.
The Midmarket and Midcap businesses made a prominent contribution to the Group’s overall activity, with
Prestige Funds, a specialist in the management and distribution of direct lending funds, has launched a new multi-manager investment fund that will specialise in allocating to both UK and international private debt and high yield credit managers.
‘Multi Finance Opportunities Fund’ was recently launched and is managed by Prestige Capital Management, a Malta based MFSA-regulated Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM). Prestige has over 10 years operating experience in Fund-based direct lending and fund of fund investing. Multi Finance Opportunities will target returns of 5 per cent – 7 per cent pa and will provide investors with access to absolute returns
Macfarlanes has advised LGPS Central Limited, one of the eight local Government pension scheme pools in England and Wales, on the launch of its inaugural pooled private equity vehicle.
Macfarlanes assisted with both the structuring and the formation of the platform. The platform is predicting annual fund launches, the first of which closed at the end of January 2019, and aims to manage and deploy in excess of GBP2 billion over the next few years for investments in a mixture of fund and direct private investments.
The team was led by investment management partner Alex Amos and tax partner
BlueGem Capital Partners (BlueGem) has sold Crafts Group Ltd (DMC) to and Lion Capital (Lion). The DMC Group comprises a portfolio of leading European brands in the needlecrafts space, including DMC, Wool and the Gang (WATG) and Sirdar. The portfolio also includes Tilsatec, a leading brand of high- performance technical yarn.
BlueGem formed The DMC Group in August 2016 as a consolidation platform for complementary needlecraft brands, beginning with the simultaneous acquisition of DMC and WATG. BlueGem identified in DMC an unloved and undermanaged company with amazing brand heritage, high-quality products and untapped growth opportunities. The addition of WATG was
Beringea, a transatlantic venture capital investor has announced a GBP2.4 million investment in DeepCrawl, a web crawler and marketing insights platform.
The funding follows on from DeepCrawl’s GBP1.75 million Series A, which was also led by Beringea – other existing high net worth investors supported both rounds.
DeepCrawl has grown significantly since Beringea’s initial investment in 2017 through expanding its customer base and successfully establishing itself in the American market. Its platform, providing a suite of leading technical SEO software products to analyse the health and performance of a site, is now used by a growing roster of enterprise
BDO’s mid-market M&A quarterly, Horizons, has revealed a two-year low in deal volumes in Q4 2018. In further analysis BDO flags a deviation from the usual M&A pattern, in which end of year deal volumes are typically higher than at the start of the year.
As mid-market M&A advisers, BDO is used to seasonality, which remained absent during 2018. The last quarter of the year ended with a lower volume of deals than the preceding quarters, even dipping below 2,000 global mid-market deals in one quarter for the first time since the start of 2016. This was compounded by the overwhelming
The latest Healthtech M&A Market Report from international technology mergers and acquisitions adviser, Hampleton Partners, has revealed a final count of almost 100 deals in the healthtech sector in the second half of 2018.
Transaction volume remained steady compared to H1 2018, inching down by a mere six per cent and thus remaining in line with a remarkably stable trend since 2013. The trailing 30-month revenue multiple rose again to 2.8x EV/S, prolonging a trend visible over the last 18 months since the increase to 2.8x in H2 2017 from a lower 2.1x EV/S in H1 2017.
In 2018,
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
