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Baker Tilly Corporate Finance has provided financial advice to Cawood Scientific, the UK’s largest independent provider of analytical testing services to land based industries, which has secured GBP4m investment from NVM Private Equity.
Cawood Scientific operates with two analytical testing companies: Natural Resource Management, based in Berkshire, provides testing capabilities to customers in the agricultural, horticultural, amenity, contaminated land, environmental and waste industries; and Sciantec Analytical Services, based in North Yorkshire, provides analytical testing to a wide range of customers in the animal nutrition and animal health sectors.
The deal will support the company to take advantage of opportunities
Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity firm, has acquired Atkins Nutritionals, a weight control and nutrition brand.
Atkins’ management team, led by chief executive Monty Sharma, will remain with the business and invested alongside Roark Capital in the transaction.
Terms of the transaction were not released.
The Atkins Nutritional Approach was popularly introduced in the 1960s. The company offers consumers its Atkins diet programme and a full suite of weight loss and weight management support tools online.
Atkins sells its products in the nutritional aisle at approximately 30,000 retail outlets, across the food, drug, and mass-merchant channel throughout the
Ben Edwards, Managing Partner at Syntaxis, outlines the reasons for the financing problems faced by European businesses, and looks at the alternatives.
While deal activity levels are picking-up across Europe, in Central and Eastern Europe, long-term debt and non-equity financing for strong businesses looking to grow is proving much harder to come by than in Western Europe.
This is the case for two key reasons:
Existing senior banks required repayment profiles which do not necessarily provide the requisite flexibility for growth-related capex, and when it is available, it is very expensive.
When there is term capital available, it is
Following approval of the Alternative Investment Fund Manager Directive by the European Parliament, the Isle of Man says it welcomes the final Directive and that work is under way to ensure it will meet key regulatory criteria.
The AIFM Directive was first introduced in response to calls for greater regulation of alternative investment fund managers.
Much uncertainty has surrounded the Directive as it has evolved over the past 18 months, but now that consensus has been reached the investment fund management community can prepare for its implementation in 2013.
The Directive has been welcomed by the Isle of Man’s
Czarnikow, the UK’s second oldest sugar trader, has advised Rio Vermelho, a Brazilian ethanol producer, on Glencore’s acquisition of a 76 per cent equity participation.
The deal value was greater than USD80m.
Czarnikow, through its corporate finance division, was the sole adviser to Rio Vermelho, which is located in the São Paulo region.
The investment is Glencore’s first in to the sugar/ethanol sector. The funds will be used to expand the mill’s crushing capacity to reach its full potential by building a new sugar plant.
The deal will also allow the Garieri family, the former controlling shareholder, to
Omnova Solutions has completed its acquisition of chemicals manufacturer Eliokem International from Axa Private Equity.
Omnova paid EUR227.5m for Eliokem, or approximately USD302m at current exchange rates, before subtracting Eliokem’s net debt and subject to working capital and capital expenditure adjustments.
The company expects the transaction to be neutral to slightly dilutive to earnings in 2011, but accretive in 2012.
In connection with the acquisition, the company issued USD250m in senior notes due 2018, replaced its existing USD150m term loan with a new USD200m term loan, and amended and extended its existing revolving credit facility.
"This combination creates a significantly
Jendens Securities, the stockbroking and advisory firm, has advised InternetQ on its AIM listing.
InternetQ is a mobile marketing services company operating in emerging markets in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
The company commences trading of its shares today at an initial market capitalisation of GBP31m.
The placing involves the issue of 5,641,025 placing shares to raise gross proceeds of GBP6.8m (GBP5.7m net of expenses) for InternetQ.
Jendens has an initial share price target of 180p, 50 per cent above the listing price.
InternetQ is used by major mobile operators such as Vodafone, Orange and MTV Network to
Maven Capital Partners has led the GBP6.9m MBO of Attraction World, a Birmingham-based provider of tickets for tourist attractions.
The new funding package will be used to further develop the business, including support for the roll out of the company’s products and services into Germany.
Whilst the travel industry has experienced a period of decline during 2008 and 2009, Attraction World has seen revenues increase significantly.
Attraction World was founded in 1996. Since 2004 the company has placed a greater emphasis on developing its online offering and systemised transaction process, which has contributed to an increase in its web-based revenues
Spending on healthcare among the OECD countries and BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China will grow by 51 per cent between 2010 and 2020, amounting to a cumulative total of more than USD71trn, according to estimates from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute.
Health spending in these areas is rising faster than gross domestic product, magnifying gaps in budget deficits and spurring governments to look to the private sector for ways to get a better value for taxpayers’ money.
One trend that is emerging globally is the use of public-private partnerships to finance and manage health infrastructure and delivery and,
Guernsey has been selected as the jurisdiction of choice for the establishment of a large closed-ended investment fund listed on the London Stock Exchange.
John Laing Infrastructure Fund, advised by Mourant Ozannes and administered by Heritage International Fund Managers, was admitted to the official list of the Financial Services Authority and to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s main market for listed securities on 29 November.
The fund, which raised GBP270m, was the second largest investment fund launched on the LSE this year, second only to Anthony Bolton’s Fidelity Special Situations China Fund, and is the largest Guernsey LSE
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