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Finnish Industry Investment has appointed Jan Sasse as president and chief executive, with effect from 6 March 2017.
Martin Backman, Finnish Industry Investment’s incumbent president and CEO, will take up a new position as CEO of Aktia Bank on the same day.
Sasse has headed Finnish Industry Investment’s growth investments team since 2015, with responsibility for direct investments in growth companies. He has long international management experience in both investment and consulting fields in companies such as Accenture, Norvestia and Satama Interactive.
Sasse has also gained experience working on the boards of companies undergoing international growth and in
Private equity house Maven Capital Partners has completed a GBP1.1 million investment in Growth Capital Ventures (GCV), funded through its managed venture capital trusts.
GCV is a developer and operator of online investment and capital crowdfunding platforms, connecting entrepreneurs and earlier-stage businesses to investors.
The investment will enable GCV to develop a new peer-to-peer lending (P2P) platform, tapping into the UK online alternative finance market which raised GBP3.2 billion in 2015, up from GBP1.74 billion in the previous year.
The new platform will focus on providing access to pre-vetted, quality investment opportunities that have the potential to deliver
Harris Williams & Co has acted as adviser to private equity firm Stirling Square Capital Partners on the pending sale of its portfolio company ESE World to RPC Group.
ESE is a European provider of temporary waste storage solutions.
The pending transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017 and is being led by Jeffery Perkins, Lars Friemann, Florian Ripperger and Konstantin Molinari of Harris Williams & Co’s Frankfurt office, as well as Patrick McNulty and Brad Morrison of the firm’s industrials group.
Jakob Förschner, a partner at SSCP, says: “ESE represents a true success
100 Women in Hedge Funds has launched a new brand and formally changed its name to 100 Women in Finance.
The organisation says the change reflects its growth over the past 15 years from a small group of women working in the hedge fund industry in New York to a global network of more than 15,000 professionals across the finance and alternative investment industries.
As part of the new brand refresh, 100 Women in Finance unveiled a new logo and visual identity system and introduced a redesigned website, accessible at www.100women.org.
"100 Women was among the first organisations
Increased protection against growing cybersecurity threats will be a top driver impact private equity firms’ IT spend in the next 12 months, according to a survey by Eze Castle Integration.
The 2016 Private Equity CTO Survey, conducted in partnership with IDG Research, polled 101 senior-level executives.
It found other top drivers of IT spend are a desire to improve the investor/client experience, and the goal of improving efficiencies by refreshing outdated or legacy technology.
Cloud computing was identified by nearly 90 per cent of respondents as a planned investment area, with respondents preferring private cloud solutions over
Private equity fund manager YFM Equity Partners has backed a GBP4 million investment in Matillion, a provider of cloud-based integration technologies.
YFM’s funding includes investment from its 2015 YFMEP LP Fund, which co-invested alongside YFM’s advised VCTs.
Founded in 2011, Matillion builds disruptive software which helps companies with structured data integration to the Cloud. An Amazon Web Services (AWS) advanced technology partner, Matillion is one of Amazon’s few AWS big data competency holders worldwide.
Matthew Scullion, managing director at Matillion, says: "YFM was unique amongst the private equity firms we met in understanding the immense opportunities that stem
Japanese denim brand EVISU has agreed a buy-back deal for its retailing and franchising rights in China.
Parent company EVISU Group Limited is reinvesting, alongside private equity fund Cassia Investment, to buy back New Elegant Trading’s interest in their China joint venture, which is financially supported by IDG Capital.
The acquisition consideration is USD40 million. David Pun, chairman and CEO of EVISU Group Limited, will remain the majority shareholder.
Pun says: "The company made concerted efforts with its China joint venture partner over the past few years to establish brand awareness and secure a footing in China. We
The Abraaj Group has implemented RAVN Connect Enterprise, a cognitive search platform which is designed to transform the way users locate, leverage and collaborate on expertise across networks.
RAVN Connect Enterprise, built upon the AI platform RAVN Applied Cognitive Engine (RAVN ACE), takes enterprise search, knowledge management and unstructured data mining to new levels.
Abraaj deployed RAVN Connect Enterprise as part of a competitive tendering process to bring about long-term transformation of its approaches to knowledge management and firm-wide collaboration across 20 offices.
The new solution enables Abraaj’s employees to easily search and access both proprietary and commissioned
Decision Tech, a performance marketing and data company that owns and operates broadbandchoices.co.uk, has acquired comparemymobile.com for an undisclosed sum.
The move comes just three months after Decision Tech completed the acquisition of sellmymobile.com, and strengthens the group’s presence in the mobile handset recycling market.
The comparemymobile.com acquisition makes Decision Tech the UK’s most used price comparison service for consumers and businesses trading in mobiles and other gadgets. Decision Tech will use this latest acquisition to develop its proposition in two key areas.
First, it will expand the suite of data insight products and services already offered by
Coolfire Solutions has received a significant investment from Clayton Venture Group (CVG), the venture capital arm of the world's largest car rental company, Enterprise Holdings.
"We couldn't be more excited about this strategic investment and having found such a tremendous partner in Clayton Venture Group," says Don Sharp, CEO of Coolfire Solutions. "Bringing together the respective strengths of our two organisations will further align the organizations and position us for even greater growth over the long term. While we have already achieved tremendous success together, we believe this investment will take our strategic relationship to the next level."
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