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Ara Partners Group, an alternative asset manager focused on the industrial, chemicals & materials and energy sectors, has made a majority investment in Centric Gas Services, (Centric), a local gas distribution platform headquartered in Magnolia, Texas.
Centric operates four local gas distribution companies and three gas transmission pipeline companies in high-growth areas in Texas. The Barnwell family, which in 1993 founded entities that Centric owns, will retain a substantial minority ownership position in Centric.
“Our partnership with Ara Partners is an important milestone for Centric,” says Robert S Barnwell IV, President of Centric. “This investment enables Centric to continue
The Maples Group has expanded its global offering, with the addition of Luxembourg legal services.
From 1 October 2018, the firm’s newly established Luxembourg office will offer advice on fund formation, finance, corporate, tax and associated regulatory work.
The addition of this fifth jurisdiction to Maples and Calder’s offering is highly complementary to its existing British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Irish and Jersey capabilities, particularly for clients using Luxembourg along with the firm’s services in these other jurisdictions.
MaplesFS, the Maples group’s independent global provider of specialised fiduciary, fund administration, entity formation and management, insurance management and trust
Elements Talent Solutions, a disruptor to the USD200-plus billion worldwide recruitment market, has received a GBP3.45 million investment from BGF to accelerate its growth across Europe, the US and the APAC region.
While recent years have seen no shortage of technological innovation in the hiring market, Elements has pioneered a model which focuses on people and seeks to change the fundamental “transaction” mechanics of the industry. Its ‘embedded model’ involves Elements consultants working on-site within the client’s hiring function and partnering with them on every stage of the hiring process.
Elements has attracted clients from global brands such as
Offshore law firm Carey Olsen has appointed corporate and finance lawyer Richard Munden as a partner in its Cayman Islands office.
Munden advises on a wide range of corporate and finance transactions with particular expertise in aviation finance and other asset finance matters including asset-backed securitisations. He also specialises in financing for hedge funds and private equity funds, debt capital market transactions, equity issues and joint venture and shareholder arrangements across a wide range of industries.
He joins Carey Olsen after 10 years at another offshore law firm in the Cayman Islands where he was responsible for leading and
Eos Venture Partners (Eos) debut Insurtech fund, EVP I, has made its first two investments, in Concirrus, a marine insurance analytics platform and in Digital Fineprint (DFP) an SME-focused lead generation and underwriting solution.
Concirrus uses AI-powered software to help marine insurers move to “behavioural-based underwriting”. The software provides behavioural analysis that considers hundreds of factors including a ship’s location and speed to offer more accurate underwriting models. It accesses and interprets vast datasets, such as vessel statistics, movements, cargo and machinery information, and combines this with historical claims information to reveal the behaviours that correlate with underwriting and claims.
Questel, an online intellectual property (IP) service providers, has acquired MultiLing, a global leader in patent translations, with the support of its financial investors IK Investment Partners and Raise.
Founded in 1988 and based in Utah, MultiLing leverages their advanced technology platform to provide the highest quality patent translation services in the most cost-effective manner. Led by its founder, Michael Sneddon, and supported by its 235 employees across eight countries, MultiLing serves 350 clients globally (mostly large corporations) in their process of international filing of patents.
This acquisition is part of Questel’s strategy to build a one-stop-shop offering. MultiLing’s
Private equity firm IK Investment Partners’ (IK) IK VII Fund is to sell Transnorm Group (Transnorm), a provider of automation technology used in parcel, distribution and e-commerce warehouses, to Honeywell International (Honeywell) for approximately EUR425 million.
Founded in 1957, Transnorm has grown to become a global market leader for high-performance engineered conveyor solutions. The Company serves a global blue-chip customer base with strong relationships to all major system integrators as well as global parcel and e-commerce companies. In addition to its broad product portfolio, Transnorm also offers for its installed base of circa 160,000 units aftermarket services comprised of spare
Owlstone Medical, a global diagnostics company developing a breathalyser for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, has completed a USD50 million financing round to drive the global commercialisation of its Breath Biopsy platform.
The round brings the total raised by the company to circa USD73 million since founding in 2016.
As has been previously announced, the initial phase of this financing round was led by Aviva Ventures, the venture capital arm of Aviva plc, a global leader in insurance, and Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Li Ka-shing. The additional USD35 million completion of the round
Some 90 per cent of LPs surveyed by Rede Partners for the 2H2018 Rede Liquidity Index (RLI) expect to increase or maintain their existing allocations to primary funds over the next year, leading to an overall RLI score of 63, down slightly from 65 in H1 2018.
Expectations for the private equity market remain strong, according to the RLI, an industry benchmark assessing investor sentiment towards the asset class. Despite this, there has been a modest cooling in investor expectations for growth in private equity commitments over the last six months.
The findings are based on the views of
Piper, a specialist investor in consumer branded businesses, has led a GBP15 million investment into Bloom & Wild, the online flower gifting brand that is disrupting Europe’s GBP14 billion fresh cut flower market.
Founded in 2013 by Aron Gelbard and Ben Stanway, Bloom & Wild has transformed the online flower gifting market, pioneering the concept of ‘letterbox flowers’. Its offering allows customers the ability to gift beautiful, high quality, long-lasting, fresh flowers in a convenient slim box that fits through the receiver’s letterbox. More than 50 million flowers have been shipped to date across the UK, France and Germany. Piper’s
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