StepStone Group has acquired SilverBrook Private Equity. As part of the acquisition, Thomas Bradley, Mark Maruszewski, and Michael McCabe, the SilverBrook partners, will join StepStone as managing directors to be based in its New York City office. The addition of Bradley, Maruszewski and McCabe will grow StepStone’s leadership team, expand its East Coast US presence, and enhance the firm’s investment and transaction sourcing capabilities. Bradley, Maruszewski, and McCabe had recently formed SilverBrook Private Equity, a secondary fund investment and private equity advisory platform. “We were in the process of building a very similar platform to that of StepStone,” says Maruszewski.

SunEdison, a solar energy services provider and a subsidiary of MEMC Electronic Materials, has sold a 70 megawatt photovoltaic power plant located in Northeast Italy, near the town of Rovigo.  When completed in the fourth quarter of 2010, the Rovigo plant is expected to be the largest operating solar power plant in Europe.  SunEdison and Banco Santander jointly developed and co-owned the Rovigo plant prior to this sale.   The Rovigo plant was acquired by First Reserve through the previously announced joint venture established between First Reserve Energy and SunEdison. SunEdison is a minority investor in the joint venture. Investment

Red Fort Capital has received GIREM’s 2010 Investor of the Year Leadership Award in recognition of its achievements in India’s private equity real estate sector. GIREM – Global Initiative for Restructuring Environment & Management – is an independent industry association focused on urban planning and real estate in India. Parry Singh, managing director of Red Fort, says: "GIREM’s leadership awards are recognised within India’s real estate industry as a testament to strong performance, and the Red Fort Capital team is therefore pleased to receive GIREM’s 2010 Investor of the Year Award." Shyam Sundar S. Pani, executive director of GIREM, says:

Data from Experian shows the number of mergers and acquisitions and equity capital market deals fell during Q3 2010 for the UK and Europe, compared to Q3 2009.  The total number of UK M&A and ECM transactions during Q3 2010 fell by 22.7 per cent compared to the same period last year – from 1,110 deals in Q3 2009 to 859 deals in Q3 2010. However, the total value of Q3 2010 deals increased by 45.3 per cent on Q3 2009 – from GBP41.07bn to GBP59.67bn. Compared to the previous quarter, the UK saw a 23 per cent decrease in

Katalyst Partners has been launched as a boutique advisory firm by Ravi Anand and Frank Ennis, together with corporate partners Kinetic Partners and Dexion Capital. The firm provides corporate finance and strategic advice to the investment management industry, encompassing both traditional and alternative asset managers, wealth managers, closed end investment companies and service providers. Katalyst Partners identifies, executes and provides advice on business, corporate or product development initiatives.    Anand, previously head of corporate finance and co-head of alternatives at New Star Asset Management, and Ennis, former partner at PwC, bring together more than 45 years’ experience in financial services. 

TA Associates, a growth private equity firm, has signed a definitive agreement to invest in Amann Girrbach, a developer, manufacturer and marketer of equipment and consumables for dental reconstruction. Alpine Equity, formerly Hypo Equity, will sell its stake in Amann Girrbach in this transaction. Additionally, current owners of Amann Girrbach will sell a portion of their stake. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. Amann Girrbach, with approximately 220 employees, develops precision systems and consumables for dental laboratories and exports them to over 70 countries. Research and manufacturing facilities are located in Koblach, Austria, with sales and distribution based in

FRSGlobal has joined Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, a regulatory compliance and risk management business. The combination of these two businesses will enable FRSGlobal to offer compliance and risk solutions that cover operational risk, regulatory compliance and financial risk and reporting. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, which is part of a USD4.8bn information services company, is solely focused on the compliance and risk management challenges of financial services organisations. There will not be any changes to FRSGlobal’s current processes, systems or communication.

Octopus Investments has made an investment of GBP275,000 into TouchType, a developer of text prediction technology designed to boost the accuracy, fluency and speed of text entry on mobile and computing devices.   The deal with TouchType represents the 19th investment Octopus has concluded this year and is one of Octopus’ first seed investments.   TouchType’s core product is the Fluency Prediction Engine, which can boost user writing efficiency by up to 50 per cent compared to a standard Qwerty keyboard. By using natural language processing techniques, Fluency is able to predict what a user intends to write. TouchType began