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Symington’s Ltd, the convenience food manufacturer and Intermediate Capital Group plc (ICG), the FTSE 250 alternative investment firm and Asset Manager, have announced a new private equity partnership to support a management buy-out of the food manufacturer.
The move follows after a five year investment period with current private equity partner Bridgepoint. ICG are investing junior debt and equity, and will hold a minority stake of 49.9% in the food company, with the existing management team taking 50.1%.
The partnership with ICG will also see Symington’s replace their funding package from Yorkshire Bank with banking support from a
Hutton Collins Partners has sold portfolio company Windsor Limited, a leading Lloyd’s specialty insurance broker, to Hyperion Insurance Group Limited. The sale remains subject to FSA approval.
Hutton Collins backed the management and employees of Windsor in a public to private buy out in 2007. A GBP15m preferred equity investment from Hutton Collins Capital Partners II LP, alongside Windsor’s management and employee equity reinvestment, enabled the team to increase their shareholdings from 10% to 78%, with Hutton Collins holding the remaining 22%. Against a lacklustre market backdrop, this concentration of team ownership helped fuel a five year period of sustained
Daniel Stewart, stockbroker and corporate finance adviser to smaller and medium-sized companies, has appointed Jane Zhu as a Non Executive Director of its Asian Subsidiary business, Daniel Stewart & Co (Asia) Ltd.
Zhu, who is based in Hong Kong, is Senior Adviser Asia pacific with the London Stock Exchange. She will take up her Non-Executive role with Daniel Stewart Asia with effect from 1 June 2012.
Peter Shea, Chief Executive Daniel Stewart, says: “We are of course delighted to have agreed the appointment of Jane, whose deep experience and wide regional knowledge and network will be of considerable value to
Leonard Green & Partners has closed the firm’s sixth private equity investment fund, Green Equity Investors VI, LP (GEI VI). GEI VI substantially exceeded its original target, closing at its hard cap of USD6 billion in limited partner commitments along with USD250 million from affiliates of LGP.
Investors in GEI VI include a diverse group of domestic and international pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, foundations and family offices. LGP engaged no intermediary to assist in the raising of the Fund.
LGP’s philosophy is to invest in middle-market companies with market-leading franchises and defensible competitive positions, attractive growth prospects
Mark Hawtin, fund manager of the GAM Star Technology Fund has recently returned from a regular visit to the Silicon Valley and Seattle. Her he provides an update on finding value in the Technology sector…
Our core investment themes are cloud, mobility, social networking, video and mobile payments. I believe mobility is currently the most attractive because of the huge opportunity presented by an installed base of 4 billion users, over four times the size of the PC installed base.
Everyone identifies that mobility will drive the adoption of video, social networking and mobile payments. These are the services that
Fitch Ratings says it expects direct lending through funds to gain momentum as European bank deleveraging continues to drive corporate disintermediation.
Fitch expects assets such as properties or corporate loans to be increasingly financed via funds, which will often have recourse to debt to increase returns for junior/equity investors, typically pension funds or insurers.
In this context, the agency has recently come across several transactions aimed at providing financing to funds. Funds with financing (or senior share classes) are typically limited partnerships, closed end funds or lightly regulated vehicles invested in private equity (corporate and projects), loans, bonds and properties.
The European Commission has enhanced its State Aid approval for the Venture Capital Trust (VCT) scheme.
This will allow the Government to introduce various changes to the VCT rules, including:
• Increasing the size of companies which can receive VCT funds (from those with assets of GBP7 million to GBP15 million); and
• Allowing companies with a greater number of employees to receive funding (up from a headcount of 50 to 250); and
• Enabling companies to receive more money from VCTs and other similar schemes (up from GBP2 million to GBP5 million).
Ian Sayers (pictured), Director General,
UK based private equity investment trust, Candover Investments (Candover) has outsourced its back office operations to Ipes, a fund services provider specialising in private equity.
The decision to outsource the back office was a strategic one, based on Candover’s need to match its operating model to a revised investment policy which now focuses on returning cash to shareholders.
Malcolm Fallen, Chief Executive for Candover, says: “Our number one priority is delivering value for our shareholders and we therefore needed to find an efficient and cost effective solution for managing our back office requirements. After analysing various options, we decided to
GCP, a provider of blended equity and debt to the UK’s small to medium sized businesses, has invested in Iglu.com, an online ski and cruise agent, in a deal valued at GBP19 million, to help the business expand into Europe.
GCP is taking a significant minority stake in the business and will join the existing board. GCP underwrote the entire transaction, providing the debt and equity on the deal that was a buyout from Matrix Private Equity Partners.
Simon Jobson, partner at GCP, says: “Iglu has capitalised brilliantly on the huge increase in the popularity of online travel, especially in
Dunedin the UK mid-market buyout house has sold Capula to Dutch quoted company, Imtech. This is the second exit for Dunedin within ten days following the sale of WFEL to KMW, a German land defence systems provider. Under Dunedin’s ownership both businesses have seen significant growth, attracting a number of bids from overseas buyers.
Capula, the UK’s market leading independent provider of IT systems that control operations and real time information at power stations, nuclear facilities and water networks has reported record order intakes under Dunedin’s ownership, of over GBP75 million in the last two years. Since Dunedin’s initial investment
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