Exits News in Brief

Gresham sells Penn and Alstec for profits

Gresham Private Equity, the London-based, mid-market specialists, has exited Penn Pharmaceuticals in a deal worth £67m with Lloyds Development Capital generating a return on investment of 12x. Gresham originally backed the £12m management buyout in September 2000 and de-merged Penn into two separate businesses – Penn Pharmaceutical and Penn T to facilitate the sale in October 2004 of the Penn T business to Celgene, a US oncology business.

In related news, Gresham has also sold Alstec, a nuclear and airport service operator, to Babcock International Group for a total net cash consideration for £44.9m. The firm’s Birmingham office backed the management buyout in May 2000. The sale provided Gresham a return of four times money.

Electra buys Nuaire

In an extremely competitive auction process conducted of the past two months, Electra, the London-based, publicly listed asset management house, acquired Nuaire from rival private-equity house, ECI partners, for £80m. ECI backed a £38m management buyout of Nuaire, a Caerphilly, Wales based maker of industrial fans and ventilation systems, in March 2004.

Fourth exit for the Capital Fund

The Capital Fund, a £50m London-based VC fund, achieved its fourth profitable exit from an investee company following the US$60m acquisition of Touch Clarity, one of the fund’s portfolio companies, by Omniture, an American software company. Touch Clarity’s software provides real-time tools that ‘learn’ the content and opportunities that are most attractive to users of a website.

Aberdeen invests in Scottish waste managers

Aberdeen Asset Managers Growth Capital backed the buy-in management buy-out (bimbo) of MS Industrial Services in a £6m deal in which Aberdeen invested £2.5m. MSIS, an industrial cleaning company, is based in Aberdeen and Invergordon, employs 35 full-time staff. The group recently announced financial results which saw turnover rise by 72% to £4.39m in the year to February 2007. Jock Cardiner and Guido Biococchi led the deal for Aberdeen.