Companies backed by private equity investments provide jobs for more than six million Americans, or more than five per cent of all private sector workers, according to analysis by the Private Equity Council. The report, the first to quantify the scope and scale of private equity employment in the US, also found that private equity investment firms channelled more than USD1trn in new capital into nearly 9,500 US companies during the past ten years. That amounts to investments of about USD120m per company. More than 2,500 of the private equity-backed businesses in the US – or 30 per cent –

Origo Partners’ portfolio company Fans Media has established a joint venture with SK Telecom called SK Fans. SK Telecom is South Korea’s largest telecom service provider. It offers an extensive portfolio of broadband and mobile value-added services and brands, including CyWorld, South Korea’s largest internet community, and CyWorld China, a social network service and blogging site. SK Telecom’s contribution to the joint venture will be the CyWorld China business, as well as USD12m in cash, for which it will receive a 51 per cent stake.  Fans Media will contribute all of its assets, including its main internet property www.ifensi.com,

QVT Fund, an approximately 7.15 per cent shareholder of Galatasaray Sportif, says it sought to include in Sportif’s 3 May general assembly meeting agenda measures intended to provide for an open and transparent disclosure of the improper loans and other actions of Sportif’s board of directors. These included violations of Sportif’s articles of association, directives from the Capital Markets Board and Turkish law.  Accordingly, QVT also proposed a number of remedies to rectify the harm caused to Sportif and its shareholders by such actions and to force Sportif to address what QVT believes to be woefully inadequate corporate governance by

Interactive Data, a provider of financial market data, analytics and related solutions, has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by investment funds managed by Silver Lake and Warburg Pincus in a transaction with a total value of USD3.4bn.  The agreement was unanimously approved by the Interactive Data board of directors, taking into consideration the recommendation of the special committee composed solely of the company’s four independent directors.  This special committee was formed as part of the previously disclosed review of strategic alternatives that was conducted by Interactive Data’s board of directors. In addition, Pearson, Interactive Data’s majority stockholder,

Private equity firm Apax Partners has signed a definitive agreement to purchase a majority stake in Sophos, an IT security and data protection provider, from the founders of Sophos and TA Associates, valuing the company at USD830m. The founders of Sophos will retain a significant minority shareholding.   Sophos provides anti-malware to protect against viruses and spyware; threat management including endpoint firewall, host intrusion detection and prevention; network access control; encryption and data leak prevention. The company has 100 million users in more than 150 countries, including Cisco, Marks & Spencer, Heinz and Harvard University.   Roy Mackenzie (pictured), a

Virtustream, a privately held infrastructure services firm, has closed out a series A round of equity financing with approximately USD40m in total capital. Its latest funding comes from Intel Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners and TDFunds. This completes the series A funding started by lead investors Columbia Capital and Blue Lagoon Capital announced in September 2009. The funding will be used to support the continued development of Virtustream’s infrastructure and the expansion of the xStream cloud computing platform. Introduced in March, xStream is the first hybrid enterprise cloud platform with guaranteed compute resources across aggregate client workloads whether hosted in the company’s

Celtic Pharmaceutical, a private equity firm focused on the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, has enroled the first patient into its Phase III trial of TDT 067, terbinafine in Transfersomes, for the topical treatment of onychomycosis or fungal nail infection.   The trial is a three-arm, double-blind study to be conducted in approximately 40 centres around the world.  It is powered to provide potentially registrational data on the efficacy, tolerability and safety of topically applied terbinafine delivered through the Transfersome targeted delivery technology over 48 weeks. PPD, a contract research organisation, has been appointed to conduct the study.   Dr. Phoebe Rich

High Street Partners, a provider of business services, has completed a USD6m series B round of financing led by institutional venture capital investor Sigma Partners. The funding round also included Baird Venture Partners and existing investor SVB Financial Group. High Street Partners will use the proceeds to accelerate development of its technology platform and aggressively scale its sales and marketing operations in the US and Europe. Two new members have been elected to the High Street Partners board of directors. Managing director Paul Flanagan (pictured) of Sigma Partners and partner Bill Filip of Baird Venture Partners will join existing board

Abterra, a company listed on the Singapore Exchange, has entered into a supplemental agreement with YA Global Master SPV, a fund managed by Yorkville Advisors, in connection with the equity line facility agreement dated 17 February, to increase the maximum investment amount from SGD20m to SGD50m.  In addition, YA Global will subscribe to an initial SGD3m series A loan note, with the option of Abterra to drawdown an additional three notes for a combined total of SGD12.0m.  The investment was advised out of Yorkville Advisors in Hong Kong.   Jaffe Lau, chief executive officer of Abterra, says: “By more than