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As your firm evaluates moving to the cloud – as most financial and investment firms today will inevitably do – your list of priorities will likely include:
Regulatory and investor impact
Migration plans and operational effects
Hardware disposal and infrastructure changes
But another critical business area your firm should put some thought into is the effect of the cloud movement on your internal IT department (assuming you have one). What exactly happens to a firm’s IT team once it moves operations into a cloud environment? Is there still value in maintaining an in-house staff?
The simple answer is ‘yes,’
Southwest Foodservice Excellence (SFE), a provider of outsourced foodservices to K-12 public schools, has secured an investment led by Harkness Capital, a private equity firm focused on investments in leading service-oriented companies.
SFE was founded in 2005 by two industry veterans, Don Gala and Luis Benavides. The Company is a leading player in the rapidly growing K-12 outsourced foodservice sector. SFE serves 80+ million meals annually across 100+ school districts in 11 states. The Company focuses on delivering more nutritious and higher quality food, providing exceptional service, and more menu choices to meet specific needs of K-12 public school districts.
Noerr has advised the US-based AVX Corporation on the takeover of a business division from the UK electronics manufacturer TT Electronics. AVX is acquiring the firm’s automotive segment, the Transportation Sensing and Control (TS&C) division, for around USD155 million.
The strategic takeover will strengthen the manufacturer of electronics components listed on the New York Stock Exchange by adding the skills of a leading developer and producer of sensors and performance electronics for the car industry. The TS&C division is located in a total of nine countries, including Germany, Austria, the UK and the US, and generated sales revenue of approximately
International corporate finance firm Clearwater International has appointed Dan Salt as a Director in its Birmingham office.
Salt (pictured), joins Clearwater International with over 10 years’ experience in finance, having previously worked for RBS and CYBG. He has worked with public and private companies as well as private equity across a range of sectors.
Clearwater International has recently published news of its record figures for the last financial year and its continued ascent of the M&A rankings table. Dan’s appointment follows a series of new recruits across the UK team and internationally – highlighting Clearwater’s ongoing commitment to invest
Law firm Ropes & Gray has advised Pulsant on its acquisition of LayerV, a specialist public cloud solution integration company, with a strong focus on compliance, security and cloud automation.
The acquisition gives Pulsant, a UK provider of hybrid cloud solutions, exclusive intellectual property around regulatory and cloud insight, strengthening its multi-cloud capabilities, particularly around continuous compliance and security, as well as its AWS offering. The new compliance solutions will be most beneficial to customers in the public sector, retail, legal and financial services where statutory compliance and data governance are critical, and where regulations such as PCI, ISO, GDPR and
MPOWER Financing, a fintech company and provider of educational loans to high-potential, international students, has launched a USD100 million debt financing round to meet its growing pipeline of loan applications.
According to Manu Smadja, MPOWER Financing CEO and co-founder: “We are seeing tremendous demand for our unique lending product which removes financial barriers to higher education for top international students. The company’s loan book has been growing at a rate of more than 30 perc ent on a month-over-month basis.”
MPOWER Financing also announced that Mike Davis, the company’s co-founder, has assumed the position of chief investment officer, replacing
Ipreo, a provider of workflow solutions and market intelligence to financial services and corporate professionals, has completed the first domestic fixed income new issue deal in Japan on IssueNet, the company’s fixed income syndicate connectivity software.
The transaction was done for hybrid bonds issued by Sekisui House, Ltd. The deal’s bookrunner was Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co, Ltd. (MUMSS), with co-lead managers Mizuho Securities Co, Ltd. and SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. IssueNet enabled the banks involved in the deal to work simultaneously in one orderbook, and for the issuer to have a real-time view into the book during the
Quaero Capital’s recently re-named Infrastructure strategy, refocused from a wider Real Assets mandate, is now entirely concentrated on infrastructure stocks, with just a 3 per cent cash provision.
The largest exposures are toll roads and tunnels (17 per cent), diversified infrastructure companies (16 per cent), and rail & bus (16 per cent). Rail & bus, agricultural infrastructure and communications towers stocks were largely unchanged over the last month, while waste recycling (the smallest allocation), communications and social infrastructure (also a small allocation), performed poorly.
The strategy is structured so that all holdings can be liquidated in one day and
O’Melveny has advised Access Technology Ventures as lead investor in the USD300 million funding of smartphone maker Essential Products Inc.
The funding brings Essential’s total capital raised to USD330 million. Other investors in the round included Redpoint Ventures, Tencent Holdings Ltd., Altimeter Capital, Vy Capital, and Amazon Inc.’s Alexa Fund.
The O’Melveny team was led by partners Warren Lazarow, David Makarechian, and Heather Meeker, and associates Chris Dombkowski and Snehal Desai.
Funds managed by EMK Capital are to acquire a majority shareholding in Luminati, the enterprise proxy network division of Hola Networks, for an enterprise value of USD200 million.
The founders of Hola Networks will retain a significant stake in the company and Ofer Vilenski, Co-Founder, will continue as CEO of Luminati. EMK and the Luminati team will work together to grow Luminati and will continue to invest heavily in enhancing the customer experience and developing additional technologies and services.
Luminati is tan enterprise IP proxy network, and helps make the Web more transparent by allowing businesses to see the
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