Law firm Carey Olsen has acted for Sandpiper in the sale of five supermarkets to Waitrose. The shops, three in Jersey and two in Guernsey, will be operated by Sandpiper CI under licence following completion of the deal, which is expected in October, and subject to regulatory authority approval until the stores are handed over to Waitrose in early 2011. Carey Olsen’s Mike Jeffrey says: "Advising on the deal for Sandpiper CI has been an excellent demonstration of the firm’s ability to employ its experts across all practice areas in both islands in the biggest deal for retail in the

Xzeres Wind has completed an equity financing of USD4,010,500 in a private placement of 4,010,500 shares (USD1.00 per share) to a group of institutional investors and high net worth individuals. Each purchaser of common stock received warrants to purchase additional shares in an amount equal to 35 per cent of the number of shares purchased by that investor, exercisable at USD1.25 per share. The company plans to use these proceeds for sales and marketing, product enhancement, expansion of its assembly and test facilities and general working capital. Based in Wilsonville, Oregon, Xzeres designs, develops and markets small wind turbine systems

GetJar, the world’s second largest app store, has closed USD11m in series B funding from Accel Partners. The company plans to apply the new capital to developing its consumer facing sites (GetJar.com and m.getjar.com) and its customer solutions such as Pay-Per-Download, App Download Page and App Catalogue Express in order to fuel its traffic growth.   GetJar is seeking to expand its offering on “open” smartphone platforms such as Android, Blackberry and Symbian. In the past year, GetJar has tripled the number of employees, quadrupled the number of downloads per month, signed partnerships with key players such as Sprint and

LGT Capital Partners has held the final close of Crown Global Secondaries II, its second global secondary fund, with total subscriptions of USD1.2bn. The programme’s investor base includes government pension funds, corporate pension funds, insurance companies, endowments and foundations from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK and US. Tycho Sneyers (pictured), partner at LGT Capital Partners, says: “There was very strong demand for the offering which initially targeted to raise USD750m. Following a first closing in Aug 2009 and a consistent deployment of capital throughout 2009, we raised our target

Vision and fundraising are more important skills for chief executives today, according to a study of venture capital-backed company leadership by executive search consulting firm Spencer Stuart and the National Venture Capital Association. Vision ranked fourth among important chief executive skills in 2010, but only seventh in the 2001 study. Fundraising ranked fifth in 2010 up from eighth in 2001. Both results reflect shifting priorities in an environment where both raising funds and the path to liquidity have become more challenging for VC-backed companies. People remain paramount. In both the 2001 and 2010 studies, venture capitalists considered the strength of

Credit Agricole Egypt has agreed to invest USD5m in Beltone Midcap Management’s new midcap fund. This new fund was initiated to provide support and help in developing the small and medium enterprises sector in Egypt. Beltone Private Equity was established in 2006 to capitalise on the unprecedented changes taking place in Egypt investment environment. As of the end of May 2010 Beltone Private Equity manages seven funds with total assets under management of EGP2.8bn. Credit Agricole Egypt was established when Credit Agricole and Mansour & Maghraby Investment & Development acquired the Egyptian American Bank and merged the network with Calyon

Dunedin, the UK mid-market private equity house, has invested in the secondary buyout of Weldex in a deal which values Weldex at over GBP100m enterprise value. Dunedin has backed the existing owners, Dougie McGilvray and his family, to continue their expansion of the business.    Weldex, the largest crawler crane hire company in the UK, has a large fleet of crawler cranes including the two largest crawler cranes in the UK, 1,350 tonne capacity Liebherr LR11350s. Their cranes have been used in a number of the UK’s largest construction contracts including Heathrow Terminal 5 and the iconic arch on the

Wheb Ventures, a European clean technology private equity firm, has invested EUR4.4m in the German company VIA Optronics, becoming a co-investor with BayBG which was an existing shareholder. VIA Optronics supplies energy saving LCD displays for products such as handheld devices, laptops, televisions, and industrial devices.   The products of VIA Optronics use less energy to achieve equivalent brightness than providers of untreated displays, thereby extending the lifetime of devices and reducing electronic waste. In addition, VIA’s optical bonding process inhibits condensation or particles in between LCD and cover lens or touch screens.   Joerg Sperling (pictured), partner at Wheb

Lyceum Capital’s strategy to consolidate the energy consultancy sector has continued with its GBP6.25m acquisition of risk management specialist Encore International on behalf of platform investment McKinnon & Clarke.  The enlarged business will be re-named M&C Energy Group on 1 July.   The mid-market growth investor acquired McKinnon & Clarke, one of the largest energy procurement and compliance specialists in Europe, for GBP22m at the turn of the year and immediately implemented a programme of operational enhancement and acquisitions.   This deal sees McKinnon & Clarke acquire Encore International, a provider of energy price risk management services which handles more