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Castle Harlan, a New York private equity investment firm, and Champ Private Equity, its affiliate based in Australia, have agreed to sell United Malt Holdings, one of the world’s largest producers of malt for the brewing and distilling industries, to GrainCorp, an Australian bulk-grain handler.
The transaction would be valued at USD655m (AUD757m).
United Malt is made up of four malting companies: Great Western Malting in the US; Canada Malting in Canada; Barrett Burston Malting in Australia, and Bairds Malt in the UK.
Castle Harlan and Champ acquired the businesses in September 2006 from Conagra Foods, a US company, and
Covington & Burling has appointed Fred Knecht as a partner in its corporate practice, focusing on capital markets and securities regulatory matters.
He will be resident in Covington’s New York office.
Knecht has nearly 20 years of in-house experience at preeminent investment banks, most recently at Merrill Lynch, where he was named managing director and general counsel for global origination and private equity in 2006.
Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Knecht spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs, rising to managing director and head of investment banking legal for the Americas.
Knecht has practiced before securities regulatory organisations, including the SEC,
Yorkville Advisors, the US based investment manager to a family of funds, has executed a SGD10m equity line facility with Advanced Integrated Manufacturing.
Under the terms of the facility, AIM may issue ordinary shares to Yorkville in tranches based on certain criteria at any time over a 36 month period for up to a total of SGD10m.
The investment was sourced out of Hong Kong and made by YA Global Master SPV, a Yorkville affiliated fund.
AIM is a Singapore Exchange Main Board listed company which is headquartered in Singapore with manufacturing facilities located in Singapore, Bintan (Indonesia) and
Causata, a software company that enables companies to optimise customer experience and business results, has secured series A funding from Accel Partners.
The USD4.5m initial investment will support Causata’s mission to deliver breakthrough software that empowers companies to understand and engage their customers at any touch point.
Causata is led by chief executive Paul Phillips, the data analytics industry veteran who previously founded TouchClarity, which he sold to Omniture in 2007.
Causata is building a flexible multi-channel customer interaction platform that discerns cause and effect and predicts in real-time what matters most to a customer at a given moment and
AVG Technologies, a provider of computer security software, has received a substantial investment from growth private equity firm TA Associates.
TA Associates, which has funded companies such as BMC Software, Cadence Design and McAfee, has bought a minority stake in AVG Technologies from its current shareholders for more than USD200m.
The deal will add another minority investor to the current ownership of AVG Technologies, which also includes investments from Enterprise Investors, Benson Oak Capital and Intel Capital.
Two representatives from TA will join the company’s board of directors.
“This is a major stake in the ground for AVG at a
Media finance and consulting firm Noci Pictures is in discussions with US and international private equity partners in closing a USD300m dollar structured media and entertainment fund that would finance 20 to 30 films.
The firm says many hedge funds, including New York’s Elliott Associates, are seeing premium returns from investing in film and media.
"As a non correlated asset class, films and film finance has outperformed every non correlated asset class in the world," says Yuri Rutman, head of media finance and consulting firm Noci Pictures. "If you look at the more than USD6bn poured into motion picture finance
TJ Hughes, a big brand discount department store backed by European private equity firm Silverfleet Capital, has outstripped retail sector performance in its year end results to 31 January 2009.
The 49 store strong chain saw an increase in turnover of 9.1 per cent to GBP261.3m and an increase in Ebitda of 30 per cent on last year to GBP9.2m.
The firm says the increase in sales has been driven by a new band of “smart shoppers” who are looking for branded products at discounted prices.
Sue Tennant, chief executive of TJ Hughes, says: ‘‘We have always had a strong
Acero Capital Management has appointed Ralph A. Shaoul as chief financial officer.
Shaoul joins Acero from Blavin where he spent five years serving in various capacities including chief financial officer, chief administrative officer and compliance officer.
Prior to Blavin, Shaoul spent four years with Gilbert Global Equity Partners as the controller and six years with Soros Fund Management as a senior accountant and operations manager.
“We are extremely fortunate to attract someone of Ralph’s calibre to our team. Ralph has extensive experience running the back office at highly respected institutions, and has an impeccable reputation among his former colleagues,” says
ITS, a provider of oilfield equipment and services to the global oil and gas industry, has received a USD55m equity investment from energy-focused private equity firm Lime Rock Partners.
The agreement provides Lime Rock with a minority stake in ITS in return for providing growth capital.
Bob Kidd, ITS Group executive chairman, says: “This is an exciting time for the group with unprecedented levels of opportunity in a challenging environment. The investment strengthens our balance sheet allowing us to continue investing organically and also to pursue the acquisition opportunities that are prevalent in the current market. Lime Rock Partners has
Ounavarra Capital has appointed Laurence B. Siegel as a senior adviser.
Siegel (pictured) will continue as research director of the Research Foundation of CFA Institute.
He was most recently and since 1994, the director of research in the investment division of the Ford Foundation. He was part of a team of six senior professionals managing their USD10bn endowment fund, which is invested in stocks, bonds, real estate, private equity, and hedge funds.
Before that, he was a managing director of Ibbotson Associates, an investment consulting firm that he helped to establish in 1979.
Siegel also chairs the investment committee of
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