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Private equity firm Risk Capital Partners has taken a majority stake in DWS Bodyworks, a crash repairer in London.
DWS repairs passenger cars and light commercial vehicles for insurers from 15 bodyshops located around the M25.
It services almost all the major UK insurance underwriters, and carries out roughly 50,000 vehicle repairs a year.
Risk Capital Partners has partnered with Steve Field, DWS chief executive, to take control of the business from Dave Smithyes, who founded DWS 26 years ago and will remain as a director and minority shareholder.
Field says: “I am delighted to partner with Risk Capital to
Amalgamated Capital, a recently formed division of Amalgamated Bank, has served as co-lead arranger for a USD25m senior secured credit facility in support of the acquisition of Wheaton Industries by PNC Equity Partners II.
Amalgamated Capital provides cash flow-based senior debt financing to support investments made by private equity sponsors in high quality, lower middle market companies.
Based in Millville, New Jersey, Wheaton is a provider of containers, laboratory ware and instrumentation to the laboratory, life sciences, diagnostics, and reagent/chemicals packaging markets.
PNC Equity Partners is a private equity firm managed by an affiliate of The PNC Financial Services Group.
Financial services firm Cowen Group has appointed Kevin Raidy as head of Cowen’s private equity capital markets group.
Raidy will be responsible for the origination and execution of all private capital raising transactions, including registered directs and PIPEs.
He will be based in New York and report to Scott Ryles, head of investment banking for Cowen.
"As we continue to expand our equity capital markets platform, I am very pleased to welcome Kevin in this new role," says Ryles. "Kevin’s deep experience in both the buy and sell-side of the industry will have an immediate incremental impact on our equity
Charles River Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, has invested in the USD35m series B financing round for TerraPower.
TerraPower is a Washington-based company developing new options for nuclear energy production.
Khosla Ventures also joined in the round for this three-year-old company that counts Intellectual Ventures co-founder Nathan Myhrvold and investor Bill Gates among its supporters.
Izhar Armony (pictured), general partner at Charles River Ventures and TerraPower board member, says nuclear energy is going to play a significant role as one of the few carbon-free sources for baseload power in the future of the US and the world. The US
Precise Media Group, the media intelligence group owned by UK mid-market private equity firm Phoenix Equity Partners, has acquired MediaGen, a provider of media monitoring, analysis and editorial services.
The transaction was funded from Phoenix’s 2006 Fund, rather than the 2010 Fund which Phoenix recently closed.
MediaGen, whose client base includes the largest broadcasters and media groups in the UK, is the second bolt-on acquisition that Precise has completed since it bought the business in late 2006, having completed the acquisition of AMI, a forward planning business, in 2007.
Keir Fawcus (pictured), managing director of Precise, says: “MediaGen is a
A group of investment banking veterans has launched Intrepid Investment Bankers, an advisory firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
The Intrepid team brings over 100 years of mergers and acquisitions advisory experience from their prior roles as principals at Barrington Associates, a firm they built into a national middle market M&A adviser before its acquisition by Wells Fargo in 2006.
Intrepid’s senior professionals include long-time Barrington Associates veterans Jim Freedman, Mike Rosenberg and Ed Bagdasarian. Joining as partners are Gary Rabishaw, Adam Abramowitz and Jeremiah Mann, each of whom worked for over a decade at Barrington Associates.
Intrepid’s services will
IK Investment Partners, a Pan-European private equity firm, has agreed with the owners of Agros Nova, ITR Investment Partners, to acquire a majority stake in the company.
Agros Nova is a diversified food and drink company in Poland. Terms of the agreed sale are not disclosed.
Headquartered in Warsaw and employing a total of around 2,300 staff, Agros Nova is a top three player in all three of its operational business segments, comprising fruit and vegetable preserves, ready-made food and non-carbonated beverages. The company currently operates four modern manufacturing plants in central Poland.
For the financial year ended December 2009,
Future Capital Partners, the GBP6bn alternative investment boutique, has hired Tim West as its deputy chief executive.
West joins from Babcock and Brown where he was head of the London office and chief operating officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Prior to Babcock & Brown, West was European chief operating officer for iShares, the exchange-traded funds business of Barclays Global Investors.
Before BGI, he held senior roles in investment banking and wealth management in the UK and Switzerland.
West will work closely alongside chief executive Tim Levy and Future Capital’s senior team to manage and further develop its
Limited partners are driving big changes to their private equity portfolios in response to new economic realities and dramatic falls in their overall returns from the asset class, according to Coller Capital’s latest Global Private Equity Barometer.
The proportion of LPs who have made lifetime portfolio returns of ten per cent or less from private equity has jumped to 51 per cent from 22 per cent in 2008 and 29 per cent in 2009.
Despite this drop in returns, investors have not lost faith in the asset class. The proportion of LPs planning to increase their percentage of assets
Venture capital firm Panoramic Growth Equity says its Panoramic Enterprise Capital Fund 1 has made an initial close at GBP34m.
The only SME growth fund to close in the UK in the last year, it has already exceeded initial fundraising targets by GBP1.5m.
The fund has secured significant funding from the private sector, attracting investment from financial institutions and high net-worth individuals. The UK government pledged GBP21.7m, its largest fund commitment since the ECF scheme began in 2006.
Panoramic’s fund will be committed to assisting fast-growing later-stage small companies in Britain, with individual investments ranging between GBP0.5m and GBP2.0m.
Stephen
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