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UK peer-to-peer finance platform Assetz Capital has received a 5-Star rating from Defaqto in the independent financial information business’ first ‘Loan Based Crowdfunding’ analysis.
Assetz Capital’s rating, which relates to investing on the platform, is one of only four 5-Star peer-to-peer awards made by Defaqto.
Assetz Capital has facilitated the investment of more than GBP130 million into credit-worthy UK businesses since its launch in March 2013 with a resultant GBP13 million of gross interest before tax earned by lenders. Every Assetz loan is backed with property, and/or other realisable security in order to minimise the risk for investors.
Stuart Law,
Loan and bond administrator GLAS has expanded its operations to Asia with the opening of a new office in Singapore headed by Paul Wilden.
The move has been driven by an increased demand for alternative loan and paying agency, and escrow service providers as banks reduce their involvement in the market.
GLAS offers a wide range of administration services to lenders, borrowers, issuers and advisers across the loan and debt markets, specialising in complex deals including loan and bond restructurings. These services have been used by Atlas Iron, Consolidated Minerals and 3i Infotech since GLAS was established in Europe
The Greater Manchester Loan Fund (GMLF) is celebrating its third anniversary, having already invested over GBP10 million in 22 local businesses.
The GMLF has the potential to invest up to a further GBP10 million, through loans of between GBP100,000 and GBP750,000 to eligible businesses.
Andy Thomas, investment director at Maven Capital Partners, the fund Manager for the GMLF, says: “The GMLF is very much open for business and we’ve been hugely encouraged by the levels of interest in the fund. We’ve seen a wide cross-section of businesses by sector and funding requirement, with applications from relatively mature businesses through
Mid-market private equity firm Bowmark Capital has sold CSL, a provider of critical connectivity solutions for machine-to-machine communications, to Norland Capital, ICONIQ Capital and RIT Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum.
CSL pioneered dual signalling technology in the alarm security industry where it manages the communications for over 400,000 commercial, retail and residential premises.
Since Bowmark invested in 2011, CSL has doubled both sales and profits and has significantly extended its product portfolio. The company has also expanded into new sectors, such as telehealth, and new geographic regions, including Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Charles Ind, Bowmark managing
BGF (Business Growth Fund) has expanded its team with the appointment of Paul Stevens, who joins from Octopus Investments.
Based in the London office, Stevens will focus on identifying investment opportunities in AIM listed companies as part of the BGF Quoted offering, which is led by Gavin Petken and Tom Jenkins and supported by BGF’s nationwide investment team.
Stevens has over 10 years’ experience investing in listed companies, having worked in the quoted smaller companies equities team at Octopus Investments, where he contributed to the outperformance of funds-under-management during that time.
Since its launch in 2014, BGF has
Pan-African private equity firm 8 Miles has led a USD80 million investment in Nigerian biscuit manufacturer Beloxxi Industries by a consortium consisting of African Capital Alliance (ACA), a Sub-Saharan Africa focused Private Equity firm, and DEG – Deutsche Investitions und Entwicklungsgesellschaft, the German Development Finance Institution.
The consortium has taken a significant minority stake to expand the capacity of Beloxxi, to address significant unmet demand and to grow its regional distribution presence. Additional details of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Nigeria’s biscuit sector has seen strong growth of 10 to 15 per cent per annum, and this is
21 Investimenti, an investment firm founded and led by Alessandro Benetton, is to sell a majority stake in Farnese Vini to NB Renaissance Partners, the private equity fund formed in 2015 by Neuberger Berman and Intesa SanPaolo.
Farnese Vini is a group active in the production, bottling and sale of Central/Southern Italian wine.
During 21 Investimenti’s three-and-a-half-year investment, the company has launched production of wine from Puglia, invested more than EUR10 million in production capacity in two modern plants in Abruzzo and Basilicata, doubled the number of employees and increased turnover from EUR32 million in 2012 to EUR56 million expected
Sun Capital Partners’ affiliated portfolio company Aclara Technologies has acquired the smart grid business of Tollgrade Communications.
The transaction includes the LightHouse distribution monitoring platform comprising Sensors and Sensor Management System (SMS) software with Predictive Grid Analytics, as well as a broad intellectual property portfolio. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
The addition of the LightHouse platform expands Aclara’s capabilities in distribution grid monitoring. Deployed at some of the world’s leading utilities, the Smart Grid LightHouse platform provides fault detection and location, power quality monitoring and classification of grid events to monitor the health of the distribution grid, make
National law firm Shoosmiths has appointed private equity specialist Amit Nayyar as partner in the firm’s corporate team in Milton Keynes.
Nayyar joins the firm from Hogan Lovells' London office, where he was a corporate partner with a focus on private equity and mergers and acquisitions. Previous to this, he held positions at White & Case and Pinsent Masons.
Nayyar has acted as lead counsel on a variety of high-profile buy outs, bolt on acquisitions, management incentive plans and exits both on domestic and multi-jurisdictional transactions. He is also actively involved in outbound and inbound investment work in India.
GigPeak, a specialist in semiconductor ICs and software solutions for high-speed connectivity and high-quality video compression over the Network and the Cloud, has closed its acquisition of Exccess Venture Fund holding Magnum Semiconductor.
Magnum Semiconductor is a provider of silicon ICs, SoCs, software, and IP for the professional video broadcast and IoT camera markets.
This marks the third consecutive exit for Exccess Venture Fund. Exccess Venture Fund, located in St. Charles, Illinois historically looks for companies that have rapidly growing multibillion-dollar addressable markets, game-changing technology, ability to achieve market dominance and a management team that has demonstrated the ability
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