Avista Healthcare Partners

The pair have offloaded Strategic Partners to New Mountain Capital.

Katie Ossman left Avista Capital Partners in September and will work on sourcing new opportunities for Water Street’s $750m Fund III.

The investment comes as Avista seeks $2bn for its third fund and Nordic targets €3bn for its Fund VIII.

The firm has added Brian Markison, former CEO of Fougera Pharmaceuticals, as an industry executive to help source deals and oversee investments. Avista now has 13 operating executives.

The firm - currently on the road with Fund III - has completed its third full exit of 2012, selling Anthony International for $603m.

In a $200m deal, the Credit Suisse spin-out has agreed to acquire 50 percent of Thompson Publishing Group, the other half of which it obtained from Credit Suisse in July.

The firm has appointed former Nycomed CEO Håkan Björklund to assist the firm with portfolio companies’ expansion into global markets.

The firm finished deploying its $1.8bn second fund in June, completing three transactions in a five-day period.

The consumer sector has seen deals take place in the household products, wellness, and travel and tourism segments so far this year.

Nordic Capital has led a consortium of investors in the sale of pharmaceutical company Nycomed to Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. The deal marks the second time Nordic has sold the Zurich-headquartered business.

Newspaper owner Freedom Communications, which the mega-firms helped recapitalise in 2004, is reportedly on the verge of a bankruptcy filing.

There is no model for the newspaper business capable of stemming what may be ‘unending losses’, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway said at its annual meeting. Despite the declining market, Platinum Equity recently acquired the San Diego Union-Tribune, and HM Capital is reportedly in negotiations to buy Blethen Maine Newspapers.

Sam Zell has said he'd been too optimistic about the Chicago-based media company, which in December collapsed under a $13bn debt load. Zell stressed the need to find a new business model for newspapers, likening a potential Tribune merger to asking another company if it wants to 'get vaccinated with a live virus'.

The implications of the liquidity crisis remain unclear, but confidence is high that investors will not lose their appetite for private equity – and even the larger funds finding it difficult to finance new deals don't seem to be losing support. Andy Thomson reports.

The DLJ spinout led by Larry Schloss has already made six investments, representing approximately 40 percent of the capital raised.

The DLJ spinout led by Larry Schloss has already made six investments, representing approximately 40 percent of the capital raised.