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Private equity firm Graphite Capital has sold Education Personnel, a provider of supply teachers and educational support staff to schools in England and Wales, to its management team in a buy-out backed by ICG.
Graphite originally backed the management buy-out of Teaching Personnel in 2010. The following year the business was merged with Protocol Education to form Education Personnel.
The combination has generated approximately 100 additional jobs at the company since the merger.
Education Personnel’s revenue has grown by approximately 60 per cent over the past four years. The number of branches has risen from 52 to 67 and
iZettle has closed a EUR40 million Series C funding round led by London-based growth investor Zouk Capital, with participation from Dawn Capital and Intel Capital.
Series A and B investors Creandum, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Northzone and SEB Private Equity also invested.
Investors in previous rounds included American Express, MasterCard and Banco Santander.
Nathan Medlock, a principal in Zouk’s growth capital team, will join the iZettle board.
iZettle will use the funding to continue growing in existing markets as well as identifying new potential territories for expansion.
"Using a card for payment is second nature
Countrywide Healthcare Supplies has secured a GBP2.7 million investment from Octopus Investments.
Countrywide was established in 1996 and operates from a purpose-built distribution centre in South Yorkshire.
With this investment Countrywide will continue to pursue its growth strategy as it looks to become the largest supplier to the UK care sector.
Octopus, which manages over GBP3 billion of assets, is building a reputation in the healthcare industry having backed the retirement village operator Rangeford and care home operator Carebase. Octopus will actively work with the company and leverage its expertise of the sector to provide support to the
Charles River has enhanced electronic trading support for swap instruments by integrating workflows from Swap Execution Facilities (SEF) in the Charles River Investment Management Solution (IMS).
This integration helps clients comply with mandatory Dodd-Frank requirements to trade eligible OTC derivatives on SEFs.
Charles River recently completed its first client SEF trade with Tradeweb.
Charles River IMS streamlines SEF trading by supporting pre-trade allocations, execution and clearing. Clients can raise orders for interest rate and credit default index swaps and send them directly from the Charles River IMS blotter to SEFs for execution.
“We’ll continue to expand our
Apollo Global Management has appointed Robert K Kraft to the company’s board of directors and to the board’s conflicts committee, effective immediately.
Kraft’s appointment to the newly created position will bring the number of independent directors on Apollo’s board to five out of a total of eight seats.
Leon Black, chairman and chief executive officer of Apollo, says: “We are very pleased to welcome Robert Kraft to Apollo’s board of directors. He is a seasoned executive and an exceptional leader, and our company will benefit greatly from his insights and expertise.”
Kraft (pictured) is chairman and chief executive
Private investment firm Highlander Partners has sold its portfolio company, SensoryEffects, to Balchem Corporation, a publicly-traded human and animal health and wellness company.
The purchase price was USD567 million, before working capital and other adjustments.
The sale represents the culmination of eight years of collaboration and enterprise building between Highlander Partners and SensoryEffects' founder, chairman and CEO Charles A Nicolais and the management team he assembled.
Nicolais approached Highlander Partners nine years ago with a business plan he had developed to consolidate and professionalize certain segments of the food ingredient manufacturing industry.
Nicolais' vision was to create
Monroe Capital has funded a USD20.8 million unitranche credit facility to support the growth of Gracelock Industries.
Based in Los Angeles, California, Gracelock Industries is a privately-held e-commerce provider to the marine, power sports, and home décor industries with operations throughout North America.
Monroe Capital continues to expand its technology and e-commerce financing platform. Gracelock is an example of Monroe using its unitranche product to provide a complete financing solution to a growing e-commerce company.
DNV GL, a ship and offshore classification society and technical risk service provider, has acquired Marine Cybernetics, a specialist in third-party testing of computer control systems.
Marine Cybernetics was established in 2002 as a spin-off from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Based in Trondheim, Norway, the company introduced the concept of Hardware-In-the Loop-Testing (HIL) to the maritime and offshore industries. HIL testing reduces the risk of accidents, off-hire costs and non-productive time due to software-related issues.
“The decision to invest in Marine Cybernetics was driven by the increasing importance of software dependent systems in ensuring
CTPartners has appointed Andrew Duncan as co-managing partner in the UK private equity practice in the firm’s London office.
He will co-lead the practice with managing partner, Guy Barnes.
Duncan previously served as an operating executive for many years. His work specialises in building talent teams within portfolio businesses, playing an active role through all stages of the process from pre to post-deal.
Duncan held several leadership and executive positions in both private and public companies with over 25 years of experience in consumer and telecommunications sectors. In addition, he is a successful entrepreneur and has led several
US retail and consumer merger and acquisition (M&A) activity during the first quarter of 2014 was primarily driven by five multibillion dollar transactions, according to PwC's US retail and consumer deals insights Q1 2014 report.
More than half of those deals were aligned to the food and beverage sector.
For the three month period ending 31 March 2014, there were a total of 34 deals in the retail and consumer sector with disclosed values greater than USD50 million, accounting for USD39.3 billion in total deal value.
Deal volume for the quarter was consistent with the first quarter of
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