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OakNorth has completed a GBP4.2 million transaction for Dartmouth Partners Ltd, the award-winning recruitment consultancy, with Literacy Capital plc taking a significant minority position.
Founded in 2012 by Logan Naidu, Dartmouth has built itself a reputation in the financial and legal sectors by adopting a unique ‘classroom to boardroom’ approach which has seen it place thousands of candidates from graduate level, all the way up to the C-suite. With a presence in both the UK (London) and Germany (Frankfurt), Dartmouth is the chosen advisor to over 300 firms and has more than 200,000 candidates on its database. Its key clients
Omnes Capital and Ilmatar Windpower have launched a joint wind platform Ilmatar Energy which will target further acquisitions of Finnish and other Nordic development stage and construction ready assets.
In the next five years Ilmatar Energy aims to construct and operate up to 1000 MW of wind power and has already acquired its first project from Metsähallitus, a state-owned enterprise responsible for the management of one third of Finland’s surface area. The project encompasses 50 turbines with a combined nominal capacity of over 200 MW. The project is aimed to be built without any subsidies but is also well-positioned to
IQ Capital, has held the first close of its GBP125 million third fund, IQ Capital Fund III, at GBP92 million.
The fund will invest at Seed and Series A stages into UK deeptech companies with transformational deep-tech, AI or disruptive algorithms at their core and led by visionary founders.
IQCF III builds on the successes of IQ’s existing funds, which included a ‘double dragon’ exit in May to Oracle (a deal that returned an entire fund twice over), enabling the first fund, IQCF1, to deliver a healthy 3.5x net return to its LPs. IQ Capital’s second fund has invested
Highland Europe has closed its third fund in six years, raising EUR463 million to boost funding for globally ambitious European software and internet-enabled businesses.
Significantly oversubscribed, the fund was raised in just 12 weeks and takes the firm’s assets under management to EUR1.1 billion.
There are now 29 active companies in the Highland Europe portfolio, with combined revenues of EUR1.1 billion in 2017. Together the firm’s companies employ over 6,500 people and are based primarily in Germany, the UK, and France and more broadly in Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the US.
Over the last 18
Paragon Group, a provider of Customer Communications, Identification and Graphics services, has acquired SIMS, the managed services division of St Ives plc. Following this acquisition, Paragon Group revenues will exceed EUR700 million during the next financial year.
SIMS will become part of Paragon Customer Communications’ business in the UK.
With revenue exceeding EUR40 million, SIMS procures a broad range of products and services for blue chip clients to support complete brand engagement programmes. These services will enhance Paragon’s existing supply chain solutions, while SIMS clients will benefit from the data analytics, digital communications and customer engagement capabilities of Paragon
PraxisIFM has acquired Nerine, a provider of private client and corporate administration services to an international client base.
This is Channel Islands-based PraxisIFM’s fourth acquisition in a two year period during which it has grown from employing 300 staff in the summer of 2017 to 520.
Nerine Trust was established in 1997 and the majority of its 92 staff are employed in Guernsey.
PraxisIFM’s Chief Executive Officer, Simon Thornton, says the deal will bring together like-minded teams. “In a world where so many of our competitors are owned by private equity houses or large institutions our continued independence and
SALU Capital (SALU), together with its partners Apex Group, Genstar Capital, and Inlife Holding, has purchased at least 95 per cent of the shares of Augur Financial Opportunities 2 SICAV (AFO-2).
The Luxembourg investment vehicle, which is managed by German Augur Capital and includes the fund’s portfolio companies, German life insurer myLife Lebensversicherung AG (myLife) and Luxembourg-based fund administration and ManCo business LRI (LRI Group), has been acquired from the Fund’s investors in a secondary fund buy-out transaction. As part of the transaction, LRI Group will become part of Apex, a Genstar portfolio company, while myLife will become a wholly
Man FRM, Man Group’s alternative investment specialist, has appointed Samantha Rosenstock as Sector Head of Relative Value and Private Markets. She will be based in New York and report to Jens Foehrenbach (pictured), Chief Investment Officer at Man FRM.
Rosenstock has 20 years of experience in the alternative asset management industry, and prior to joining Man FRM was Head of Alternative Investment at the State of New Jersey. In her role at the public pension fund, she helped manage a portfolio of global hedge funds, private equity, private credit, real estate and real asset investments. Prior to this, Rosenstock was
A veteran of litigation finance has launched a well-capitalised company with a commitment to elevate fairness and client objectives in financing commercial and business legal disputes.
Ralph Sutton, formerly chief investment officer of Bentham IMF, has formed Validity Finance to provide businesses, law firms and individuals with non-recourse funding for a wide variety of commercial litigation.
Validity’s backers have committed up to USD250 million of capital to the new business. The company is anchored by a majority commitment from New York and London-based private equity firm TowerBrook Capital Partners, through its Structured Opportunities Fund.
Sutton sees Validity as
OakNorth has provided The Inn Collection Group, one of North East England’s biggest leisure operators with seven sites across Northumberland, County Durham and Teesside, with finance to fund further expansion.
Established in 2006, The Inn Collection Group has become a market leader in developing contemporary inns providing accommodation, food and drink to leisure and business customers. It currently has 215 rooms across its seven sites, but plans to increase this to almost 300 by 2020 with the OakNorth lending.
In addition to opening an eighth inn later this year – a 30-bedroom inn in Amble, Northumberland – the business
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