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Stuart Bedford has joined LeapFrog Investments as general counsel, leaving his role at law firm Linklaters, where he was head of the London corporate division and the private equity group.
Bedford has led over USD40 billion of transactions across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe – including major M&As, IPOs and placings.
Dr Andrew Kuper, CEO and founder of LeapFrog, says: “Stuart is a star performer and exceptional leader in his field globally, bringing deep pattern recognition and multi-market capabilities. His distinctive expertise further strengthens LeapFrog’s governance, risk management and transaction capabilities.”
Bedford joins as a partner and
Octiv, a provider of sales productivity solutions, has secured an investment from GE Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Electric.
The investment, part of a round totalling USD4.75 million with participation from Greycroft Partners, High Alpha Capital and Allos Partners, will enable Octiv to expand its product capabilities, strengthen its engineering team, and refine its go-to-market strategy.
The Octiv sales productivity platform helps progressive sales and marketing teams improve how sales documents and assets are created, distributed and tracked.
Octiv leverages data from systems such as CRM, CPQ and ERP to automate document workflows. This enables users
Fund administration and middle office provider Apex Fund Services’ Luxembourg operation will be the first administration office in the group to use the Riva Transfer Agent (Riva TA) software solution.
The deployment of the Riva TA application at Apex Luxembourg will compliment Apex’s “Global Reach, Local Presence” service strategy by providing access to a rapid time-to-market administrative solution perfectly designed for the Luxembourg and European cross-border fund markets.
Apex says that both new and existing clients will benefit from the change.
“We are delighted to announce that Riva’s award winning Riva Transfer Agent application will be deployed at
Aberdeen Asset Management is further developing its alternatives business with the promotion of John Dickie to co-head of US private equity, alongside Scott Reed, and the appointment of Whit Matthews.
Matthews joins Aberdeen’s US private equity team as senior investment manager, strengthening the private equity investment capabilities of the firm’s global alternatives division, which has grown to USD32 billion of assets under management.
Over the past year Aberdeen has integrated its private capital teams to form a group that covers all of the world’s leading financial centres spanning the US, Europe and Asia.
The 50 person-strong private equity team
Although alternative assets remain a crucial component of many portfolios, investors are finding it harder to identify attractive investment opportunities compared to a year ago, according to Preqin’s survey of over 490 institutional investors.
With a record-high 2,798 private capital funds in market, and 13,725 hedge funds open for investment, choosing the right fund is challenging; 57 per cent and 54 per cent of real estate and infrastructure investors respectively are finding it harder to find attractive opportunities.
At the same time, among private equity and hedge fund investors 47 per cent and 46 per cent respectively stated the
The ability to create value at the portfolio company level is a critical driver of private equity funds’ outperformance of public equity markets, according to research by Private Equity at LBS (London Business School), supported by private equity investor Adveq.
In one of the largest studies of its kind, Value Creation in Buyout Deals: European Evidence, London Business School authors Aleksander Aleszczyk, Emmanuel De George, Aytekin Ertan and Florin Vasvari examined a sample of 1,552 European private equity-initiated deals, executed between 1998 and 2014, in an effort to better understand how equity value is created at the portfolio company level.
BayWa re has sold the Saint-Congard wind farm in Brittany, north-west of Nantes, to the FPCI Capenergie 3 fund managed by Omnes Capital.
This is the first time that BayWa re has sold a French wind farm to a French investor.
The wind farm consists of four turbines manufactured by Senvion with an output of 8.2 MW. It has been operated by BayWa re since coming online in 2014.
As the Munich-based full service provider is already familiar with the plant, it will continue to provide technical and commercial operations management.
In total, BayWa re has brought four wind farms to completion in
LDC has supported international trust and corporate services provider Equiom in its acquisition of Links Group, a provider of commercial facilitation and advisory services in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Links Group was the first company of its kind to introduce the corporate partner structure for local partner services, endorsed by the Government of Dubai through a strategic alliance with the Foreign Investment Office of the Dubai Economic Department.
The partnership will expand the geographic reach of both companies and broaden their respective service offerings.
The acquisition will create a business with combined revenues of more than
Dyal Capital Partners, a unit of Neuberger Berman Private Equity, has acquired a passive, non-voting minority interest in alternative investment firm Starwood Capital Group.
Proceeds from the investment will be used in part by Starwood Capital Group to fund its strategic growth initiatives worldwide, which now includes more than USD53 billion in assets under management with a primary focus on global real estate, energy infrastructure and oil and gas.
Starwood Capital Group will continue to be led by chairman and CEO Barry Sternlicht.
The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Evercore served as financial adviser and Kirkland & Ellis served as legal adviser to Starwood Capital Group in this transaction.
BPS Financial, a wholly owned subsidiary of the ASX-listed BPS Technology, has launched a new business finance product to support and enable its current and future merchants.
BPS Financial will market tailor-made finance products to its small and medium enterprise merchants via a new partnership agreement.
The company has executed an agreement with Get Capital that will make available a range of finance products to its 36,000 merchants throughout its business networks, including Bartercard Group, Entertainment Publications and Bucqi.
Initially the facilities will target growth finance opportunities as well as working capital finance requirements of members.
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