Firms and Funds

Sovereign Capital Partners has realised its investment in specialist education provider SENAD Group through the sale of the business in a £130m (US$239.5m) deal to an unnamed corporate buyer. The transaction has generated an IRR of 110% and represents a return of 6x money. This is the first exit from the £120m Sovereign Capital Limited […]

Its fourth fund reaches a first closing of £5m

Doughty Hanson has sold its remaining 26.6% stake in RHM, the UK food group it floated in 2005, for £247m. The shares in the latest placing were priced at 266 pence per share, down from the 275 pence per share when they were listed on the London Stock Exchange in July 2005. The sale marks […]

HgCapital has sold Castlebeck, a UK provider of specialist healthcare and rehabilitation services for adults and adolescents with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour, to Castle Holdings Limited for £255m. The sale comes four years after HgCapital acquired the business from 3i, which saw it invest £20m of equity for an 85% stake. Since July 2002, […]

Italian insurance group Generali has launched a fund-of-funds, committing €175m of its own money. The fund is to be managed by AMB Generali Private Equity. Ten insurance companies of the group, among them four French investors and Generali Austria, have committed to the fund. AMB Generali Private Equity GmbH was founded in 2002 and initially […]

Orthogonal Partners, a venture set up by former members of the Sainsbury family office, is launching its first investment vehicle to create a globally diversified portfolio of assets. The fund’s objective is to achieve returns of between 15% and 20% net IRR and is expected to have a size of US$200m. The fund will invest […]

Doughty Hanson’s real estate arm has sold Handelsblatt Headquarters, a publishing office located in Düsseldorf, to IXIS AEW Europe, a French based real estate manager, for over €40m. The sale means that Doughty Hanson has now sold all the assets in the Holtzbrinck Portfolio it acquired in January 2003 from German publishing group Georg von […]

Beringea has sold Mergermarket, the M&A data provider, to the Financial Times Group, which is a subsidiary of Person. The sale will generate a total return of 14x the original investment for Beringea and an IRR of 69%. Beringa invested in Mergermarket through Global Fights Fund II, ProVen VCT and ProVen Growth & Income in […]

OncoMethylome Sciences, a venture-backed Belgian life sciences business, has completed a dual listing on the Euronext Brussels and Amsterdam Stock Exchanges. The molecular diagnostics company issued 3,373,334 shares on its IPO at a price of €7.50 per share, raising €25.3m, giving it a market capitalisation of approximately €75.5m. OncoMethylome is backed by ING Belgium (which […]

Investors are willing to back sub-£2m entrepreneurs