Cinven opens year with promotions

Cinven, a European buyout firm, has appointed three new partners and two principals to its London, Paris and Frankfurt teams.

Caspar Berendsen has been promoted to partner, having joined Cinven in 2003 as a member of the business and financial services team. Before Cinven, Berendsen worked at JPMorgan in London advising Dutch and Belgian clients.

Matthew Sabben-Clare and Xavier Geismar have also been promoted to partner, having joined Cinven from Merrill Lynch in 2005 and Boston Consulting Group in 2001 respectively.

Alexis Le Marie has been promoted to principal. She joined Cinven in 2005 and since then has led transactions including NCP, Avio and Coor. He has previously worked at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and Goldman Sachs. Fellow principal Christoph Hoph joined the firm’s healthcare team in 2004, he was previously at UBS in the investment banking and hotel and leisure coverage divisions.

Like most large LBO firms, Cinven was relatively quiet in the second half of 2007, although it bought Nordic services business Coor Service Management Group from 3i for €540m (US$793m) in November and sold down some of its share in French cable group Numericable to US investor Carlyle. In July, Cinven acquired Spanish healthcare group USP Hospitales from Spanish private equity firm Mercapital for €675m.