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Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has made a new investment in PowerShare, an electric vehicle (EV) charging platform startup based in China.
PowerShare provides an online platform that connects EV drivers, charge point operators and power suppliers to streamline the charging experience. It offers a cloud-based system, enabling suppliers to monitor the demand from vehicles with the supply capacity of the grid and drivers to find available charging stations.
PowerShare is the most recent addition to the Alliance Ventures portfolio in the field of early-stage development and entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of next-generation systems
Private equity investor Mid Europa Partners (Mid Europa) has sold Bambi, a biscuit producer in the countries of former Yugoslavia, to Coca-Cola HBC AG (Coca-Cola HBC). The transaction is subject to customary competition authority clearance and is expected to close in Q2 2019.
Mid Europa acquired Bambi in 2015 together with Imlek and Knjaz Miloš, the leading regional dairy and natural mineral water players, respectively, forming the consumer group – Moji Brendovi. Bambi, a confectionery producer, recognised the increased consumer focus on health and wellness and emerged as the regional biscuit category leader.
Robert Knorr, Co-Managing Partner of Mid
iwoca, one of Europe’s fastest growing small business lenders, has raised an additional GBP150 million in equity and debt capital. The investment brings iwoca’s total funding to GBP350 million.
iwoca’s most recent fundraising included a Series D equity round led by Augmentum Fintech, the specialist fintech venture capital investor. NIBC Bank and other existing investors, including Prime Ventures, also participated.
The capital raised will enable iwoca to support more small business owners across the UK, Germany and Poland. iwoca reached profitability in 2018, while doubling its revenue in each of the last three years.
iwoca built award-winning technology
Triggered by both limited partner (LP) requirements for more ‘skin in the game’, and the rising demand for private equity funds pushing up fund sizes, GPs are struggling to free up funds for increasingly large personal commitments, according to the 2018-19 Investec GP Trends survey.
The research, which surveyed 289 private equity professionals around the world, revealed that GPs expect to commit an average of 2.9 per cent to their next fund. While this is a drop from 3.3 per cent 12 months ago, the rise in average fund sizes – up from USD1,765 million for the five years from
Future Ventures has launched an oversubscribed fund of USD200 million to invest in frontier technologies across diverse industries including machine intelligence, sustainable mobility, the future of food, computational biology, high-performance computing, aerospace, and more.
Future Ventures is co-founded by Steve Jurvetson and Maryanna Saenko. Jurvetson is well-known as an early leader in identifying and backing industry-redefining companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, Nervana, Mythic, and Memphis Meats. Saenko’s background as a research engineer and her venture capital experience from prior roles at leading firms combine to give her insight into technology business growth and a thoughtful approach to funding audacious ideas.
Mid-market advisory firm Clearwater International continues to grow, with 70 per cent of its deals in 2018 having Private Equity (PE) involvement.
Anaqua, a provider of innovation and intellectual property management solutions, has secured a significant equity investment from Astorg, a European private equity firm.
As part of this transaction, Astorg will become the controlling shareholder of Anaqua, replacing Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, both of whom have been investors since 2013.
The transaction will accelerate Anaqua’s global organic growth and acquisition strategy. This announcement follows the recent launch of AQX, Anaqua’s leading-edge software platform. With the integrated AQX platform, Anaqua’s customers can seamlessly access analytics and tech-enabled services to transform their IP assets into business success.
Astorg is
The Cambridge Associates Global ex-US Developed Markets Private Equity Index returned 20.4 per cent for the year ending 30 June 2018.
Over the same period, the equivalent index for listed companies, the MSCI EAFE Index, returned just 6.9 per cent. The MSCI EAFE Index is designed to represent the performance of large and mid-cap securities across developed markets in Europe, Australasia, and the Far East.
Cambridge Associates says the strong performance of private equity funds is based on their successful allocation of capital to technology investments, which delivered the highest returns of all sectors in the first half of
The State Street Global Exchange Private Equity Index (GXPEI) posted a moderate increase of 3.03 per cent in the third quarter of 2018.
The Venture Capital category continued to lead for the third quarter in a row with a 4.65 per cent gain, followed by Buyout Funds with 2.84 per cent; Private Debt lagged behind with a 1.34 per cent return for the quarter.
The PEI is based on directly-sourced limited partnership data and represents around USD2.8 trillion in private equity investments, with more than 2,900 unique private equity partnerships, as of September 30 2018.
“2018 is
Funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management have completed the previously announced acquisition of Aspen. The transaction, which was first announced on 28 August 2018, closed following receipt of regulatory approvals and the approval of Aspen’s shareholders.
Under the terms of the previously announced agreement and plan of merger, the Apollo Funds have acquired all of the outstanding ordinary shares of Aspen for USD42.75 per share in cash, representing an equity value of approximately USD2.6 billion.
Aspen is now wholly owned by the Apollo Funds, and Aspen’s ordinary shares have ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange
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