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Cowen Group has appointed Craig E Zaph as head of debt capital markets in the company’s investment banking team.
Zaph is based in New York and reports to Kevin Raidy, head of investment banking.
“Craig Zaph rounds out a series of important investment banking hires in recent months and brings momentum to Cowen’s debt capital markets (DCM) practice,” says Raidy. “Providing clients with a full range of innovative debt financing solutions has been a cornerstone of our capital markets franchise. Craig’s leadership will further this effort. Craig has a significant amount of experience in originating and structuring debt products,
Private equity firm Thomas H Lee Partners (THL) is making a significant investment in System One, a provider of workforce solutions and integrated services.
The investment proceeds will be used to purchase the interests of middle market private equity firm MidOcean Partners, System One’s current investment partner, which invested in the company in December 2012. Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, System One is one of the largest professional staffing firms in the US with over 6,000 employees serving the diversified engineering, clinical/scientific, IT, and legal markets. System One offers a full
StarOfService, a Europeean marketplace for local services, has raised USD10 million in Series A investment.
It follows two previous seed funding rounds worth USD2 million in total and will accelerate the French start-up’s expansion plans.
StarOfService, launched in 2013, sees more than two million requests going through its site from customers looking to find local support services to meet specific needs – anything from wedding photographers, plumbers, language teachers and DJs, to Pokémon Go ‘masters’ for hire. The platform generates over EUR800 million in business volume to the service professionals listed on its site – and is growing at
Catapult Ventures, manager of the GM&C Life Sciences Fund, has completed two seed investments in sensor technology developer Kanichi Research and anti-microbial materials developer Virustatic.
The GM&C Life Sciences Fund makes initial investments of GBP50,000 to GBP3 million into life science companies based in Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Warrington.
Seed investments of between GBP50,000 and GBP100,000 are made into start-up and early stage opportunities specifically to enable companies to prove an aspect of their technology and/or business proposition.
Based in Warrington, Kanichi Research was founded by Professor Craig Banks, currently the associate dean for research, Faculty of Science
Dundee Venture Capital, an Omaha-based seed-stage investment firm, has raised USD20 million for its Fund III, which will back start-ups in the broader Midwest US.
The capital will be deployed into seed and early-stage investments targeting e-commerce, B2B SaaS and consumer-network focused start-ups. Dundee Venture Capital has made over 30 investments in start-ups to date, with a goal of actively transforming the business landscape of the Midwest through entrepreneurship.
With a target capital raise of USD30 million, Fund III will be 65 per cent larger than Dundee’s previous fund. The current fund focuses on consumer and B2B investments and
21 Centrale Partners has promoted Fabrice Voituron and Antoine Vigneron to partner.
Gérard Pluvinet, founding managing partner of 21 Centrale Partners, says: “We are eager to offer fulfilling careers, allowing the best of our teams to fully express their talent. Fabrice and Antoine have gained much experience at
Voituron joined 21 in 2012 as principal. He is involved in following 21’s participations in Skill&You, DGF and Impact.
Prior to joining 21, he spent 11 years at Omnes Capital as a principal in LBO and development covering investments and exits, fundraising and transversal topics for the management company.
MUFG Investor Services has appointed Kate Stallard as executive director, business development – EMEA.
She will be responsible for driving forward MUFG Investor Services’ asset servicing solutions by developing strategic relationships with private equity, real estate and infrastructure firms.
Stallard will support new and existing clients with a series of solutions including fund administration, asset financing, custody, depositary, trustee, FX, banking and jurisdictional regulatory services.
Formerly the founder of financial services consultancy IRIS Partners, Stallard brings 20 years of senior investment services experience to her new role.
Prior to founding IRIS Partners, she was head of private
NewAlpha Asset Management, a specialist in management company incubation and private equity, has appointed Vladimir de Maack (pictured) as international investor relationship manager based in Paris.
De Maack has 13 years of experience in asset management, acquired within the Societe Generale Group.
As head of sales development at Lyxor AM in Luxembourg and Belgium since 2011, de Maack developed the Lyxor AM offer regarding alternative management and solutions dedicated to institutional clients. He implemented several solutions to optimise own accounts within the regulatory frameworks of Basel III and Solvency II.
De Maack started his career in 2003 and
Inflexion Private Equity has acquired a majority shareholding in Group IMD from funds managed by Vitruvian Partners.
Headquartered in London, Group IMD is a global technology business automating the distribution workflow of video advertisements from advertising agencies and production companies to broadcasters and the online video industry. The company connects over 2,500 clients and 14,000 digital and linear media channels in more than 100 countries.
Group IMD’s IMD Cloud is the only global, fully-automated, entirely cloud-native platform for broadcast-grade, video advertising distribution workflow. As mission-critical technology, IMD Cloud is relied upon to distribute a significant proportion of video advertising
UBS Asset Management’s infrastructure and private equity business has held the final close of its inaugural infrastructure debt fund, Archmore Infrastructure Debt Platform (Archmore IDP), which has raised EUR570 million (USD640 million).
The capital has been raised from 17 institutional investors comprising a mix of insurance companies, pension funds and family offices spread across eight European countries and Japan.
This strong level of interest reflects the ongoing trend in the current low-yield and interest rate environment of investors seeking alternative investments, such as infrastructure debt, which offer low risk but higher yielding options relative to traditional fixed income
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