Matthieu Favas
Matthieu Favas is the editor of Agri Investor. He was previously the web editor of Infrastructure Investor, where he started in 2013 after a year as a reporter at Private Equity International. Prior to joining PEI he spent four years in the wine industry in London, Spain and Mongolia.
The hedge fund manager is expected to pay more than $200m for the bank’s $18bn Customized Fund Investment Group, which will create an entity with around $40bn under management.
The deal, which is the latest by the firm’s Fund VI, comes three months after Hg reached a £2bn hard-cap on its Fund VII.
The UK firm’s latest fund, which reached a final close on €1.5bn last January, is now 36% deployed.
The Bahrain-based firm will pay £100m to purchase the company from Langholm Capital, which acquired a majority stake in the business in 2008.
While M&A activity continued to decline, valuations posted a slight increase in the second quarter.
A boost in refinancings saw the UK private equity market raise €7.4bn of debt in the first half of 2013 – up 73% on last year – while Q2 remained the second highest quarter on record for European high-yield bond issuance.
The Spanish firm, which merged with rival Mercapital earlier this year, is aiming to collect €150m for investments in mid-market public equities.
The departure of Alan MacKay comes as the fund of funds accelerates its restructuring process, paving the way for its business to be split into distinct private equity and infrastructure units.
A former portfolio company of now-defunct Candover, Swissport is already the world’s largest provider of aviation ground services.
The financial services specialist firm is expected to pay around £300m for the book of unsecured loans, five years after submitting a failed bid for the whole of the nationalised UK lender.