Affiliated Managers Group has completed the acquisition of Pantheon from Russell Investments, a subsidiary of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. Pantheon is a private equity fund of funds manager, delivering private equity investment solutions to a broad range of clients for over 25 years. Pantheon manages regional funds of funds in Europe, the US and Asia, as well as global secondary funds of funds, global infrastructure fund of funds and customised separate account programmes. Pantheon currently has committed funds under management of approximately USD26bn across 300 global clients, including pension funds, endowments, government bodies and insurance companies. In the Pantheon transaction,

Brooke Private Equity Associates has changed its name from Brooke Private Equity Advisors. The manager of private equity funds of funds made this change in an effort to more accurately reflect the structure of the organisation and better align the mission and philosophy of the firm. “This name change is part of the natural evolution and institutionalization of our firm,” says John Brooke, managing director. “(Brooke Private Equity) Associates both recognises the important contributions of our people as well as the principal nature of our investment activities.” There are no management or personnel changes associated with the name change.

Sovereign Capital, the UK private equity buy and build specialist, has acquired Tech Music Schools, its second investment in the UK higher education market this year. Tech Music Schools is the longest established contemporary music provider in the UK, delivering a range of drum, vocal, keyboard and guitar courses for approximately 740 UK and international students from its three sites in West London.  Having started as Drumtech, a drum school, Tech Music Schools has been training musicians since 1983.   Tech Music Schools’ alumni include Jon Brookes of The Charlatans, Marina and the Diamonds as well as many graduates that

Symform, a company in the backup and disaster recovery segment, has closed a USD4m financing led by Longworth Venture Partners. OVP, Symform’s original venture investor, also participated in the round. As part of the financing, Longworth’s Nilanjana Bhowmik will join Symform’s board of directors. “Symform’s unique cloud storage technology puts premium value on commodity hardware residing in millions of business locations worldwide while giving IT resellers a ‘must have’ offering for their SMB customers,” says Bhowmik. “We love Symform’s disruptive market position and we’re confident in its future success.” With nearly 1,000 reseller partners in North America, Europe and Asia

Main Street Capital partially exited two portfolio company investments during June 2010. Main Street completed the partial exit of its equity interest in Gulf Manufacturing through a recapitalisation transaction with a third party institutional investor. As part of the recapitalisation, Main Street sold all of its equity warrant interest and a portion of its direct equity interest in Gulf for USD3.9m in total consideration. Main Street recognised a USD2.1m long-term capital gain for tax purposes related to the recapitalisation. Due to a portion of the total Gulf investment being held by Main Street Capital II and the purchase accounting associated

Private equity firm Riverside is selling Berlin-based Teufel Speakers to HgCapital, the European sector-focused private equity investor. The acquisition is yet to be completed and is subject to regulatory approval. The value of the transaction is undisclosed.   Teufel, a designer and online retailer of loudspeaker systems in Germany, designs, markets and sells its own brand audio speaker systems (home theatre, multimedia, integrated systems) directly through its B2C internet platform, www.teufelaudio.com.  With the support of Riverside, the company expanded its portfolio and started to sell into other European countries, including the UK, last year.    Riverside acquired Teufel in

J.P. Morgan has been appointed depositary bank by JinkoSolar, a China-based solar product manufacturer, in connection with its recent initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. JinkoSolar raised USD64.2m through issuance of 5,835,000 American depositary shares, with each ADS representing four ordinary shares in its initial public offering.  Each American depositary receipt was priced at USD11.00.     “Through this ADR programme, we intend to further increase our visibility within the US investor community,” says Chen Kangping, chief executive officer of JinkoSolar.  “J.P. Morgan’s DR team has been extremely professional and responsive to our needs throughout the entire process.

Affiliates of Thomas H. Lee Partners and certain current and former members of management have completed the sale of Michael Foods to affiliates of GS Capital Partners. The transaction values Michael Foods at approximately USD1.7bn. Michael Foods is a producer and distributor of food products to the foodservice, retail and food ingredient markets. Its principal products are specialty egg products, refrigerated potato products, cheese and other dairy-case products. Thomas H. Lee, which acquired Michael Foods in 2003, will retain an ownership stake of approximately 20 per cent as part of the transaction. "We look forward to working with Jim Dwyer,