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Fuel.Ventures, a newly formed fund led by one of Europe’s leading technology entrepreneurs and investors, Mark Pearson (pictured), partnered with Europe’s leading equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs to give everyday investors access to a pipeline of high growth European e-commerce start-ups.
To date, 274 investors have helped the fund push past its half a million pounds target.
When the crowdfunding started, Pearson became the first successfully exited entrepreneur and angel investor to set up an investment fund and open it up to everyone.
After aiming to raise GBP500,000 from investments of as little as GBP100, Fuel.Ventures’ world-first crowdfunded investment
Sandra Holdsworth, fixed income manager at Kames Capital, comments on the European Central Bank’s (ECB) latest monetary policy decision…
Today the European Central Bank (ECB) held its regular Governing Council meeting to discuss monetary policy. Monetary Policy was not changed and in the accompanying statement the ECB remained reasonably optimistic regarding the prospects for economic growth and inflation, accompanied by the usual exhortation to national governments to step up their structural reform efforts.
The press conference Q&A was more dramatic: in response to a question on Greece, ECB President Draghi announced that it had approved a request from the Central
International investment bank Altium has had a strong start to 2015, advising on 26 deals worth GBP5.4 billion.
The first half has seen a team, led by CEO Phil Adams, advise on the GBP1.9 billionn sale of UK retail business New Look to South African investment company Brait. Altium also acted as adviser to CVC Capital Partners on the purchase of Douglas, Europe’s leading specialist retailer of beauty and personal care products, with revenues of circa GBP1.8 billion.
The firm’s UK offices were very active during the period, completing nine deals. Key deals in addition to New Look included
Exponent Private Equity (Exponent) is to acquire The BBI Diagnostics Group (BBI), a provider of products and technologies to the diagnostic, healthcare, research, defence and food industries, from Alere Inc for USD164 million.
Founded in 1986, BBI became a listed company on London’s AIM market in 2004, before being acquired by Alere (formally Inverness Medical Innovations) in 2008. Headquartered in Cardiff, South Wales and employing c470 people across multiple global sites, BBI has been a trusted partner to some of the world’s leading diagnostic and healthcare organisations for over 25 years. BBI was founded upon the success of the superior
In this extract from the Preqin Quarterly Update: Hedge Funds, Q2 2015, we take a look at recent industry performance using the latest data available.
Q2 2015 was a volatile quarter for hedge funds but still broadly positive with hedge funds (+1.45 per cent) outperforming the S&P 500 (-0.03 per cent) for the second consecutive quarter. CTAs, however, had a difficult quarter, returning -3.92 per cent for Q2 2015 as many trends reversed during the quarter along with the ongoing negotiations regarding Greek debt and extraordinary volatility in the Chinese public markets, leading to many CTAs giving back much of their strong performance generated through Q1 2015.
Equity
Preqin’s Real Estate Online provides comprehensive information on 76 institutional investors based in Chicago that actively invest in real estate, which collectively represent over USD57 billion invested in the asset class. Nearly a quarter of all institutional real estate investors based in Chicago are foundations (Fig 1), closely followed by private sector pension funds (20 per cent), and endowment plans, public pension funds and wealth managers, which each comprise 13 per cent of the total number.
Due to the large proportions of smaller investors in terms of assets under management (AUM), such as foundations, endowments and wealth managers, 47 per
Venable has co-advised, with Canadian business firm McMillan LLP, client PlentyOfFish Media, Inc on its sale to the Match Group, a subsidiary of IAC, for USD575 million in cash.
The parties have entered into a definitive acquisition agreement and expect to close the transaction early in the fourth quarter.
PlentyOfFish, the Vancouver based online dating site, was founded in 2003 by CEO Markus Frind, and now has over 100 million registered users and over 4 million active daily users.
The transaction is subject to the receipt of the approval from the Minister of Industry pursuant to the Investment
BaltCap has sold its 48 per cent shareholding in the Latvian moulded fibre manufacturing company VLT Ltd.
BaltCap invested in the company back in 2004 to finance two rounds of expansion of production capacity. While post crisis economic environment proved challenging to sustain growth of the company, the moulded fibre packaging producer maintained solid profitability, acquired new export markets and solidified its market position in Eastern Europe.
The shareholding was sold to one of the founders of the business. The parties have agreed not to disclose details of the transaction.
Private equity firm Arlington Capital Partners has acquired Avalign Technologies from RoundTable Healthcare Partners.
Avalign is a manufacturer of implants and instruments, specialty instrumentation, cutting tools, and cases and trays to the orthopedic medical device and specialty surgical markets. Avalign offers its OEM partners a broad portfolio of manufacturing solutions and extensive engineering design, development, and project management capabilities from concept to launch. Avalign has an established reputation for consistent and sophisticated quality systems, flexible capacity capabilities, and superior customer service.
Matt Altman (pictured), a Partner at Arlington Capital, says: “Avalign is an established leader in the large and
iTech Capital, a Europe-based private equity (PE) fund with a focus on the global digital market, has invested USD3 million in TradingView, a growing social FinTech platform that unites traders and investors from around the world.
iTech Capital, who will take a minority stake in TradingView, led the Series A round, which amounted to USD3.6 million alongside other seed investors and angels.
TradingView provides a next-gen online platform where thousands of amateur and professional investors and traders share insights and ideas in real-time, free of charge. The site currently features over 500,000 monthly active users from 100 countries, and
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