FORWARD FEATURES CALENDAR

Solutions

LBO France’s Cityvision Group of SLT (Société des lignes touristiques) and SELT (Société d’exploitation des lignes touristiques), have sold L’OpenTour Paris, to RATP Développement. L’OpenTour Paris is an open-top hop-on hop-off bus tours service, carrying over 750,000 passengers each year. Since its creation in 1998, it has become Paris’ leading sightseeing service, regularly offering new and innovative services to effectively meet the changing needs of its customers. Since L’OpenTour Paris was acquired by LBO France in 2008, it has strengthened its position as Paris’ market leader with constantly increasing passenger numbers and revenues (up 50% between 2008 and 2014). On
Lena Ng, Intralinks
On Wednesday 22 April, the House of Representatives passed a new cybersecurity bill – the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (PCNA) – to allow file sharing between government intelligence agencies and private companies and raise the overall awareness of hacking.  This is just the latest chapter in what is fast becoming a key narrative within the US, where cybersecurity legislation is being rolled out to address the growing sophistication of cyber attacks.  Hedge funds are now becoming a more pronounced target and to that end, lawyers are requiring to get on top of the issues to advise their clients accordingly. Ed
Completed stamp
RO Real Estate, the UK commercial property investment and development company, has completed a 13,000 sq ft letting with Regus at its 30,000 sq ft office building, Norwich House on Savile Street in Hull. RO is currently undergoing major refurbishment works on the whole building and expects works to complete in September 2015. On completion of the works, the building will offer high quality naturally ventilated office space on flexible terms. Following this deal, the building will still have 13,992 sq ft of office space and a 2,260 sq ft retail unit available to let direct from RO. The fit
Cybersecurity issues have existed as long as the internet. What seems to have changed in the last 18 months is not only that the nature of the breaches has become more sophisticated, but also the fact that hedge funds have become a much bigger target.  For fund-of-hedge-fund (FoHF) managers, whose value-add to investors is identifying the best talent to invest with, the issue of cybersecurity and data protection has taken on far greater importance. They have to be fully satisfied that a manager’s IT network is secure, and that best practices are being adopted as far as possible. “The cybersecurity
digital world
Custom House Fund Services, a provider of financial services to the alternative investment sector, is to release significant enhancements to its Gateway technology platform over the next few months.  Gateway is the company’s web based portal that connects fund servicing with solutions across the middle and back office, designed specifically for US alternative investment managers.   Among the new features will be the ability to extract flash reports of information already on the platform, deliverable for specific timeframes; expanded reporting features including the capability to produce graphs with pricing information; the ability to overlay third-party data to provide a more
Trevor Chisholm, Director of Alternative Investments at Intralinks has appeared in a new video on Asset TV. The interview discusses how managers can achieve transparency whilst still maintaining control.  This is becoming something of a juggling act for managers as they grapple with the expectations of sharing more details on their portfolios with investors on the one hand, and maintaining sufficient control over how that information is shared on the other. Cybersecurity is a top-line issue for managers on the back of the SEC’s recently issued Initiative Risk Alert highlighting the importance on information and cybersecurity preparedness.  As Chisholm points
Two fingers
Omnes Capital has sold its stake in Exclusive Networks to a consortium of investors led by Cobepa, realising a 4.8x multiple on the deal. This is the second exit for Omnes’ mid cap fund CACI 3.  On this occasion, the fund has been repaid and six investments remain in portfolio. The private equity funds managed by Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners (Edrip) and Socadif, which invested in the deal alongside Omnes Capital, are also selling their stake.   Exclusive Networks, based in Boulogne-Billancourt, is Europe's leading independent value-added distributor (VAD) for the EMEA region, specialising in the marketing of solutions
Todd Partridge, IntraLinks
Intralinks’ Todd Partridge (pictured) advises a multi-pillar approach to guard against cyber attack.   In light of high-profile hacking events, where the likes of JP Morgan, Home Depot, and, most notably, Sony suffered significant losses of information, it is incumbent upon organisations to think more holistically about governance. Enterprise must put in place a security framework that incorporates people, processes, and technology. This is especially important for hedge fund managers, who share sensitive portfolio and investor information with various counterparties across external networks. These data-transfer channels are potential weak points for hackers to exploit.  Todd Partridge (pictured) is an executive
Announcement
Private equity firm Swander Pace Capital has sold its minority investment in natural and organic meat company Applegate to Hormel Foods Corp.  Swander Pace, along with Applegate founder Stephen McDonnell, have transferred ownership to Hormel in a transaction valued at USD775 million. “We have enjoyed working with Stephen and the rest of his team to grow Applegate into the leader in the natural and organic meat industry,” says Andrew Richards, a Managing Director at Swander Pace. “Over nearly three decades, Applegate has been changing the food industry and providing quality products to meet the changing preferences of consumers who highly
Ross Ellis, SEI
Once a fund manager has got the middle office infrastructure in place – the hardware as it were – the logical next step is to work out how best to utilise it. How can the flow of data – and flow of data is not simply the software – be used in a smart, intelligent fashion to bring incremental gains to the way that the manager runs its business? This is a question that many managers now face as the volume of data they must handle for a variety of regulatory and investor demands continues to rise exponentially. With the

Events

12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am

Directory Listings