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European private equity firm Cinven has agreed the sale of all 245 ASK Italian and Zizzi restaurants to Bridgepoint for a consideration of GBP250 million.
This transaction represents Cinven’s complete exit from its investment in the Gondola Group (‘Gondola’ or ‘the Group’), the market leader in the UK casual dining sector, following the sale of the PizzaExpress and Byron restaurant brands separately for a combined consideration of approximately GBP1 billion. This sale brings the total sale proceeds to approximately GBP1.3 billion, generating a money multiple of 2.4 times.
In the UK, Zizzi and ASK operate 136 and 109 restaurants,
Maven Capital Partners (Maven) has racieved a 3.8x multiple return on its investment in control systems specialist EFC Group, via a secondary buyout to a consortium of private investor.
The exit from EFC represents the latest profitable disposal by Maven’s Aberdeen-based team. In recent years the team has overseen the sale of a number of high-growth energy services support businesses, including Nessco and Walker Technical for returns of 2.7x and 2.9x respectively.
Aberdeen-based EFC is a niche market leader providing monitoring systems and instrumentation to the oil and gas sector. Its specialist designed and engineered solutions are now used
Private equity investment firm HIG Capital has appointed Simon Laker as Principal and Head of European Asset Management of the firm’s real estate portfolio.
Laker will be based in HIG's London office and joins the firm from Evans Randall, where he actively managed real estate investments across several European jurisdictions.
HIG Capital’s real estate platform targets opportunistic real estate investments, with a focus on adding value, improving performance, and achieving attractive risk adjusted returns. The HIG European real estate team is active across a wide spectrum of real estate asset classes and has completed 11 transactions across multiple jurisdictions
semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies is to acquire a 9.4 per cent stake in printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer Schweizer Electronic.
The relevant contracts have been concluded, but both companies have agreed strict confidentiality on the terms of the deal.
By investing into Schweizer Infineon is looking to jointly develop technologies for the integration of power semiconductors into PCBs and to tap the chip embedding market for high-power automotive and industrial applications. Schweizer’s chip embedding technology will round out Infineon’s proprietary chip embedding packaging technology BLADE, used for example for direct current supply (DC/DC conversion) that is necessary for processors in
Africa-focused private equity firm DPI, along with other investors, is to sell Assur Africa Holding (AAH) to the AXA Group “AXA) for a total consideration of approximately EUR198 million.
AAH holds a 77% stake in Nigerian insurance company Mansard Insurance (Mansard). AfricInvest, DEG, FMO and PROPARCO were invested alongside the fund, which was the largest shareholder in AAH. The transaction is expected to close before the end of 2014.
Mansard offers a diverse range of life and non-life products to both institutional and retail clients. Mansard is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and is the largest listed insurer by
Taliance, a global analytics provider serving the alternative investments marketplace, has released a new version of its asset and data agnostic platform, GlobalAsset.
The new release enables users to view their investment platform as a whole and then drill down into asset level detail, while also providing a top level view of their cash flow and complete asset portfolios.
According to Carol Penhale, chief client experience officer, Taliance: "This represents our biggest step forward yet in turning GlobalAsset into the holistic platform of choice in the alternative investment market.
"It further streamlines our solutions offering and customers who have
A new foster placement scheme has been launched in Birmingham, supported by a Social Impact Bond (SIB).
Following a competitive tender process, Birmingham City Council selected Outcomes for Children, a social enterprise within Core Assets Group, to deliver the service, with funding from Bridges Ventures’ Social Sector Funds.
Nationally, too many young people grow up in residential care institutions, where their long-term life outcomes are typically worse than those who grow up in a family. Outcomes for Children has been commissioned to find stable family foster placements for around 60 young people currently in residential care in the Birmingham
Amit Srivastava has joined Cycle Capital Management (Cycle Capital) as Senior Partner
With more than 20 years of experience in venture capital, Srivastava brings to Cycle Capital team a very rich experience in international business development. Until recently, Srivastava served as Managing Partner and CEO of Entrepia Ventures. Prior to joining Entrepia in 2001, he worked for seven years at JP Morgan Chase, including four years at JP Morgan Partners (formerly Chase Capital Partners), where his responsibilities included leading venture capital investments in the electronics sector, oversight of private equity investments in India, and serving as the Portfolio Manager of
Octopus Investments has completed the merger of the five Octopus Titan Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs). The merged Octopus Titan VCT will target an annual regular dividend of 4p per share initially.
This will increase to 5p per share during the two years after the merger, and will also pay special dividends where applicable. The latest special dividends of 15p to Titan VCT 4 shareholders and 10p to Titan VCT 5 shareholders were paid on 21 November.[1] In September Octopus announced the launch of a GBP50 million fundraise across the Titan VCTs, which will remain open following the merger.
The
Figures released by the Bank of England have placed Aldermore third in a list of participants in the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS).
Aldermore’s net new lending to SMEs as part of the scheme in the third quarter of 2014 was GBP73 million. This continues the Bank’s sustained increase in lending to UK SMEs.
Aldermore Chief Executive Phillip Monks, says: “We are pleased to see that Aldermore is, once again, among the three lenders to have lent the most to SMEs during the third quarter of 2014. Aldermore is a bank that champions SMEs, we know how important small
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