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Puppet has secured USD42 million in funding led by Cisco Investments along with EDBI, Kleiner Perkins, True Ventures, and VMware. The DevOps and automation company recently closed its second acquisition, adding multiple products to its portfolio in the process, and opened new global offices.    “Our rapid growth and international expansion is a testament to the rising demand for DevOps transformation, software automation and the pressing need for enterprises to navigate the new world of software delivery. That’s why we’ve been so focused on expanding our product portfolio—to empower customers to discover, deliver and operate software across their cloud and
Jared Jensen has joined Sidley Austin as a partner in the firm’s global Private Equity practice. Jensen, who will be based in the San Francisco office, was formerly a partner with Goodwin Procter LLP. Jensen has extensive experience advising private equity and venture capital firms, their sponsored companies, and other clients on public and private M&A, tender and exchange offers, recapitalisations, management buyouts, going-private transactions, carve-out transactions and minority growth investments. He represents clients in a wide array of industries, including software, information technology, financial services, life sciences, consumer products, education and business services. Jensen also provides guidance on public
Signal Media, an AI-powered reputation management and decision support platform, has raised USD16 million (GBP12 million) in a Series B round led and priced by GMG Ventures LP, the independent VC fund whose limited partner is The Scott Trust, owner of The Guardian news organisation. MMC Ventures was the largest investor in the round, which included a debt facility from Kreos Capital. Other investors include Frontline, Hearst Ventures, Reed Elsevier Ventures and LocalGlobe.   Signal tackles the information overload facing executives as they seek information they need to help shape their decisions. Signal applies a layer of machine learning to
Chris Zingo, Finastra
Harmonic Fund Services has gone live with Finastra’s Fusion Loan IQ solution. The independent fund administration and alternative asset fund servicing firm will use the platform – traditionally employed by banks and service providers to service their bilateral, specialised and syndicated loan portfolios – to provide a new loan administration and agency service to its diverse alternative investment funds client base. “Our customers have sophisticated needs, and when it comes to loan admin servicing that is no exception,” says John Wolfe, Director, Harmonic Fund Services. “With Fusion Loan IQ, we will be able to expand our services to meet the
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

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