Electra Partners and its portfolio company Premier Asset Management have completed the acquisition from Aberdeen Asset Management of the management contracts for two Oeic fund umbrellas containing ten open-ended former Credit Suisse funds.  The fund management contracts comprise GBP910m of assets taking Premier’s total assets under management to approximately GBP2.5bn.  The transaction was for a consideration of GBP23m and was equity funded by Electra Partners.   Alex Cooper-Evans (pictured), investment partner of Electra Partners, says: “Since the beginning of the downturn we have concentrated on protecting and enhancing our portfolio. This bolt on is a prime example of the strategy;

Venture capital firms Montagu Newhall Associates, Balderton Capital Management (UK) and Scale Venture Partners have sold their stakes in ScanSafe, a provider of web security-as-a-service, to Cisco Systems. Cisco is a designer and manufacturer of communications, network and information technology related products. The acquisition will enable Cisco to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services for advanced security enforcement. The acquisition brings together the Cisco IronPort high-performance Web security appliance and ScanSafe’s SaaS Web security service. On 27 October, Montagu Newhall, Balderton Capital and Scale Venture Partners (formerly BA Venture Partners) announced that they were

New Earth Solutions Group has achieved financial close on two projects with approaching GBP20m of investment, including circa GBP13.5m of senior debt provided by Norddeutsche Landesbank. New Earth has achieved financial close on its latest mechanical and biological treatment facility at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which will become the company’s fourth operational site. The 50,000 tonnes per annum facility will be constructed at the existing Lafarge Aggregates Cotesbach landfill site. Developed through a partnership between New Earth and Lafarge Aggregates, the facility is underpinned by a waste treatment contract with Leicestershire County Council that runs until March 2015 with options to

New York-based private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners has led an investment round in Clear2Pay, a financial services technology company that delivers global solutions for secure and timely electronic payments. The investment, which also includes funds from current Clear2Pay investors, will provide the company with EUR50m to fund its next stage of growth and potential strategic acquisitions. The payments technology industry is a large and growing market with a multi billion dollar revenue opportunity. Many banks, processors and clearing houses are currently working with legacy payment silos that are proving inefficient and outdated in the face of shifting industry dynamics

Mid Europa Partners has commenced a tender offer to purchase the outstanding ordinary shares of Invitel Holdings, par value EUR0.01 per share, and any and all of the American depositary shares, each representing one Invitel share, which it does not currently own at a purchase price of USD4.50 per share. This represents a premium of approximately 27 per cent over the Invitel ADS closing price of USD3.55 on the NYSE Amex Stock Exchange on 4 December 2009 (the last trading day prior to the announcement of the offer) and a premium of approximately 28 per cent and 19 per cent

Agro-Ecological Investment Management, a private equity and real estate asset management company, will launch its first fund, the Agro-Ecological Farmland Investment Fund 1, in the first quarter of 2010. The fund will invest in farmland in New Zealand, acquiring conventionally-managed farms and converting them to organic production. It will focus on profitable, sustainable and ecologically-cognisant farmland asset management.   Agro-Ecological raises funds from individual and institutional investors to deploy in the agricultural sector.   “We have identified a number of prospects for this first fund, and we look forward to beginning our investment process early in 2010,” says Geoff Burke,