BRIEFS – Deals –

ABN AMRO Capital completed its secondary buyout of UK photography retailer Jessops from Bridgepoint Capital for GBP116 million (approx. $180 million).

Management Dynamics Inc., an East Rutherford, N.J.-based provider of tariff and contract management services for the ocean transportation industry, was bought out from Celarix Inc. by a group of company executives and investors. In addition to the ownership transfer, Management Dynamics secured $6.7 million in new financing led by Cross Atlantic Capital Partners. Other participants included the New Jersey Technology Council Venture Fund, the Megunticook Fund and company founders Jim and John Preuninger.

The Riverside Co. agreed to purchase four subsidiaries of automobile components producer Dana Corp. for an undisclosed price. The units, which employed a combined total of nearly 700 people and had 2001 sales of $81 million, are: Tekonsha Engineering Co., an aftermarket brake manufacturer; SurePull Products, a producer of hitches and towing equipment; Theodore Bargman Co., a manufacturer of exterior illumination products; and American Electronic Components Inc., a producer of sensors, switches and relays.

TA Associates recently reduced its holdings in Fargo Electronics Inc. from 21.3% to 13.3% by transferring one million shares of Fargo common stock to limited partners in TA/Advent VIII LP Fund. The move comes more than three years after TA first invested in Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Fargo, a producer of desktop plastic card personalization systems that went public in early 2000.

Vivendi Universal agreed to sell its European and Latin American publishing businesses to a consortium consisting of the Lagardere Group, Ripplewood Holdings and publisher John Wiley & Sons. The sale will be carried out on the basis of an enterprise value of _1.25 billion ($1.22 billion), and will include VUP’s general literature, reference and educational publishing activities, excluding U.S. publishing group Houghton Mifflin. Vivendi had originally hoped to sell all of its publishing assets in one fell swoop, but it instead decided to reopen bidding on the Houghton Mifflin assets. There were two other bids reported for the European and Latin American assets, one of which included PAI Management, Apax Partners, Thomas H. Lee Co. and Blackstone Group.