Robert Venes

Blackstone, Cinven and CVC are reportedly looking at Swedish healthcare business Capio, despite Apax Partners and Nordic Capital having a €1.67bn unsolicited bid rejected earlier this month.

AXA Private Equity has followed up its acquisition of an 85% stake in French airport support equipment supplier by launching a public buyout offer and squeeze-out of the Euronext-listed group.

The Carbon Trust, a UK government-funded organisation committed to cutting carbon emissions in the UK, has finished assembling its board in the run-up to a £75 million listing on AIM. Robert Venes reports.

Private equity firms Cinven, The Carlyle Group and Apax Partners have made a fourth disposal from their 2002 buyout of the business publishing division of Vivendi Universal Publishing, selling MediaMedia USA in a secondary buyout to Vestar Capital Partners.

Buyout firms Permira, The Carlyle Group and Apax Partners are reportedly mulling separate bids for TIM, the mobile unit of Telecom Italia, in what would be Europe’s biggest ever buyout.

Despite being launched over 30 years ago, Sophia Antipolis in France doesn’t yet have the high profile of other clusters like Silicon Valley in the US and Cambridge in the UK - but that doesn’t mean it deserves to be written off. By Robert Venes.

Another European minister has warned of foreign investors damaging national assets.

The ratings agency has downgraded £100m of mezzanine loans for Focus, a do-it-yourself retailer owned by Duke Street Capital and Apax Partners, over the increased possibility of a default.

Higher levels of debt in private equity buyouts in Europe has increased risks for financial institutions warns a report from De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank.

David Kelting, the joint head of Barclays Capital’s sponsor origination team, has been promoted head of European leveraged finance, replacing Chris Coles, who is going on sabbatical.