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Kingswood Capital Management (Kingswood), an operationally-focused lower-middle market private equity firm, has closed the Kingswood Capital Opportunities Fund I.
The Fund was oversubscribed and closed at the hard cap with total commitments of USD230 million. The Fund received commitments from a balanced group of high-quality limited partners, including public pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, multi-manager funds, and family offices.
The Fund will seek to make value-oriented control buyouts and structured debt and equity investments in companies that are headquartered in North America and characterised by operational, transactional, and/or structural complexity where the Firm believes it can
JP Jenkins, an established UK trading platform for private companies, has launched a new online trading platform JPJ Direct.
The Company has created an ecosystem for a secondary market, giving greater visibility and liquidity to unquoted private companies and encouraging wider share ownership through two different routes to market.
Coinciding with the platform’s 30th Anniversary, the newly launched online trading platform, JPJ Direct, offers private companies a direct shareholder investment facility allowing for fast, efficient online trading without requiring a broker or intermediary, making it simpler than ever to buy and sell private company shares.
JPJ Direct will now
Rapidly growing SME lender Grow Finance has strengthened its executive management team with the appointment of a chief operating officer.
Lee Clarke brings a wealth of banking and finance experience, most recently in the rapidly growing fintech arena, where he built and executed a successful go to market strategy for another company in the highly competitive SME lending market.
Prior to this Clarke held leadership positions at GE Capital, Allianz Finance, ANZ and Orix Australia as well as managerial roles at Bank of Queensland and St George Business Finance.
At Grow Lee is responsible for overseeing day to
Bain Capital Private Equity (Bain Capital) and Cinven (the consortium) have entered into definitive agreements to acquire Lonza Specialty Ingredients (LSI), a division of Lonza AG, for a total enterprise value of CHF4.2 billion.
LSI is a world-leading provider of specialty chemicals for microbial control solutions, used to eliminate or control harmful and unwanted micro-organisms. LSI’s products are critical ingredients in disinfectants, preservatives, sanitisers, personal care products, as well as coatings and other industrial uses. The business also produces a range of other specialty chemicals, centred around its unique production facility in Switzerland.
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, LSI has
Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) showed extraordinary resilience in 2020 despite the challenges of the pandemic, according to a new survey of VCT managers conducted by the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).
In the survey, which was conducted between 1 December 2020 and 6 January 2021, 40 per cent of managers said trading conditions for their investee companies had improved since January 2020 with a further 27 per cent saying conditions were unchanged. Reflecting this, the average VCT delivered a positive total return of 4 per cent in 2020, while the FTSE All Share delivered a 10 per cent loss in
This webinar explores some of the trends for 2021 which we think fund managers ought to keep an eye on…
Surface Transforms, which manufactures next-generation carbon ceramic brake discs for the automotive and aircraft industries, has raised GBP20 million in a financing round led by Zeus Capital.
The raise follows a successful 18 months for Surface Transforms, in which it has secured contracts to supply brake discs for five new vehicles by four major automotive manufacturers, providing an expected revenue pipeline of GBP43 million. The company is also increasingly confident of securing at least two new contracts in the near future.
Based in Knowsley, Liverpool, Surface Transforms will use the funds raised to construct a new production cell at
Puma Private Equity, the private equity division of Puma Investments has completed a GBP2 million investment into Ostmodern, a digital product design and technology business that creates innovative video platforms for some of the world’s leading entertainment companies, including Formula One, Arsenal, Channel 4 and Fox.
Ostmodern has been at the forefront of innovation in digital product development for over 10 years. Projects have included creating a world-class streaming service that reconnected Formula One with younger audiences all over the world, blending content and data into an intuitive, enjoyable experience. It was F1’s first ever direct-to-consumer product, delivering live
Kester Capital (Kester) has made an investment in Optibrium, a drug discovery software provider to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
The business’ customer base includes five of the top ten global pharmaceutical companies.
This off-market deal is Kester Capital’s third investment in the Life Sciences sector and follows the successful closing of its latest fund, Kester Capital II, which had its final close in August 2020 at its hard cap. Despite challenging market conditions, the fundraise was oversubscribed and exceeded its target with a diverse group of new and existing institutional investors.
Optibrium was founded in 2009
Inflexion has reinvested in the British Engineering Services Group (BES) to support the company’s continued growth. Inflexion has been an investor in the engineering testing, inspection and consultancy services specialist since it led the carve-out from RSA plc in October 2015.
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