News in Brief

Trade Sale

Bowmark Capital, a mid-market private equity firm has sold its majority interest in Medscreen Holdings to Concateno. Concteno acquired the entire issued share capital of Medscreen for a total consideration of £30m from Bowmark, Medscreen’s management and other private equity shareholders. This represents a return of 6.7x cost on its investment and an IRR of 52%.

Trade Sale

Primary Capital has sold Rhyme Systems to 3i-Infotech for £28m. The exit represents a money multiple of 3x and an IRR of 50%. Primary Capital originally invested £7.9m from the Primary Capital II fund in November 2003. RBS provided the debt for the deal and Primary took a 75% equity stake with the management holding the balance.

IPO

Enterprise Investors, the largest private equity firm in Central and Eastern Europe with €1.6bn in assets, has successfully sold its minority stake in Polish Energy Partners in a secondary offering on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The value of the sale of the remaining 16.5% stake was €9.2m which yielded a money multiple of 3x.

IPO

Premira agreed to sell its entire holding in Grandi Navi Beloci (GNV). SVG Capital, a minority stakeholder saw approximately £18.9m on the deal, which represents and uplift of £8.3m or 5.7p per share to the June 2006 valuation of GNV. Funds advised by Premira acquired a majority holding in GNV in October 2004. The company underwent a recapitalisation earlier this year returning approximately 36% of the cost of the investment to investors.