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The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained an emergency court order to freeze the assets of St Louis-based private investment funds and management firms after suing them and their principal for a scheme to defraud investors.
The SEC alleges that Burton Douglas Morriss diverted more than USD9 million of investors’ money to himself without their knowledge or consent, and he mischaracterised the transfers as ‘loans” in his companies’ books. Morriss misused the money for alimony payments, interest on personal loans, and costly vacations including an African safari.
“Morriss attempted to hide his illegal transfers of investor funds by calling them
European private equity firm Cinven has reached an agreement to acquire CPA Global – a global provider of intellectual property (IP) management services and software – for an undisclosed consideration, from its current shareholders, including Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) and the founder shareholders.
The transaction is subject to the approval of a Scheme of Arrangement in Jersey and regulatory clearances, and is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2012.
ICG acquired a significant minority stake in CPA Global in January 2010, investing alongside the Group’s management and founder shareholders (a number of patent attorneys in
Carey Olsen has announced the appointment of two new partners in its Jersey office. Daniel O’Connor and Peter German (pictured) join the busy corporate, finance and investment funds group.
O’Connor joined Carey Olsen in 2008 and specialises in investment funds, private equity and financial services regulation. He has extensive transactional experience of a wide range of investment structures working for both global financial institutions and specialist fund managers. Dan is an active member of several industry consultation and steering groups which develop funds policy and regulation, including his technical work for the Jersey Funds Association.
German has been working at
EQT has decided to domicile future EQT funds onshore in Europe. Potential new jurisdictions include the UK, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, but also other onshore alternatives, for instance Sweden, will be considered. EQT’s funds are currently domiciled in Guernsey.
A number of steps have been taken within the EU to introduce a harmonised framework for the regulation of alternative investment fund managers, such as private equity. The regulatory environment has been clarified significantly and the framework will enable EQT to domicile future funds onshore.
“EQT has grown rapidly during the last couple of years and is now one of the
Private equity firm HIG Capital has appointed Henry Gregson as a managing director in its London office. Prior to joining HIG, Gregson was a Partner at Pamplona Capital, a EUR1.3 billion fund based in London. Before that, he spent several years at the private equity arm of Royal Bank of Scotland, where he led a number of successful transactions.
Gregson says: “I am delighted to join a leading organisation such as HIG, with a unique business model focused on providing deep operational and strategic resources, and a very flexible capital base which enables it to invest both in debt and
Mid-market buy-out firm AAC Capital UK has sold Volution Group to funds advised by TowerBrook Capital Partners LP (TowerBrook). AAC UK generated a money multiple of 2.4x on its original investment of GBP49.25m.
Headquartered in Crawley, Volution supplies a range of ventilation products to improve the built environment with an emphasis on energy efficient solutions. Volution’s largest operation, Vent-Axia, is the UK’s leading branded ventilation business and the UK market leader in energy efficient residential ventilation and heat recovery products.
The group also incorporates the Torin-Sifan OEM fan and blower supplier, the UK’s only manufacturer of low energy motors focussing on ventilation
Quantum Capital Fund (QCF), a multi-staged venture capital firm, has officially launched a USD200 million fund in the US.
Founded in South Africa in 2004 by Julian Pencilliah, QCF provides direct investments and business expertise to organisations operating across the information technology, online media and Internet-related sectors.
QCF’s first US technology venture is an initial USD30 million investment in The Jetstream, a new social media network targeted to a wide variety of people who are on a journey to self-discovery. Its US operation is led by Silicon Valley technology pioneer, Arnold Magcale, and is headquartered in Santa Clara.
"Establishing presence
Symplified, the Cloud Identity Company, has raised USD20m in a Series C round of venture capital financing led by Ignition Partners. The company, which tripled revenues and customer adoption last year, is the market share leader in the rapidly expanding cloud identity and access management (IAM) segment with more than three million licensed users of its cloud identity management platform.
Symplified will use the funds to expand operations, service and support, research and development, and marketing resources to satisfy global demand for its cloud service which provides seamless IAM across SaaS, Web and mobile apps used by employees, customers and
The proposed European Union financial transaction tax (FTT) could lead to a significant decrease in cross-border trading of financial instruments in the EU, undermining the single market, according to the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global hedge fund association.
AIMA, which has carried out a comprehensive analysis of the proposed FTT, said there would be a significant slowdown in trading of financial instruments like shares, bonds and derivatives in the EU.
The AIMA analysis concluded that the FTT would have widespread, unintended damaging consequences. As well as undermining the EU’s single market, the FTT would be likely to
SIG is increasing its weighting to equities against a background of almost universal investor pessimism, according to the firm’s latest monthly asset allocation report. In his monthly note, SIG CIO James Millard says, “investors remain very overweight cash” but “we are considerably more optimistic on the outlook for markets than consensus”…
Tensions in the global economy eased somewhat during December with the US growing above trend rate in the final quarter of 2011. In Europe, where many of the issues of 2011 remain unresolved, while the peripheral Euro countries will almost certainly stay in recession throughout 2012, the core countries may only
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