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Carlyle has appointed Andrew Burgess as managing director in its London office. Burgess joined the European buyout team, which manages two private equity funds. Carlyle Europe Partners I is fully invested and Carlyle Europe Partners II, a €1.8bn fund, closed in March. The European buyout team has completed 25 investments, five of them in the UK – including Firth Rixson, QinetiQ, AZ Electronic Materials, Petroplus and the recently announced acquisition of Britax Childcare.

Jean-Pierre Millet, managing director and head of Carlyle’s European buyout group, said that Burgess’ experience of the UK market was a benefit to the firm. Burgess joined from Bridgepoint, where he was a director of the buyout group based in London for 11 years. “The UK market continues to be a source of good deals with great potential and remains a key market in our investment strategy,” said Millet. While at Bridgepoint, Burgess was a director of a number of companies, including Birmingham Airport, IMO Car Wash and First Credit.

• Allied Irish Bank strengthened its Frankfurt-based acquisition finance team, hiring Jens Richter as vice-president responsible for the generation and execution of new acquisition finance business in Germany. Richter joined AIB in September from KBC, Frankfurt, where he was head of the German acquisition finance operation. He previously worked as a project manager in leveraged finance with ING-BHF. At AIB, he will report to Kai Gebauer, who is responsible for AIB’s leveraged finance operations in Germany. Richter brings AIB’s acquisition finance team in Germany to eight executives, and the hire is part of an ongoing strategy to expand AIB’s leveraged corporate lending activities in Germany.
• Kleinwort Capital appointed David Ramsey as an investment manager to its new investment team. Prior to joining KCL, Ramsay was at KPMG Private Equity Group for more than four years, where he was associate director from 2003. For the last four years at KPMG he oversaw commercial and due diligence for more than 25 UK and European mid-market and LBO transactions. Ramsay also held positions at strategic advisory boutiques p.Four Consultancy and Basis. His background includes commercial and strategic due diligence in UK and European leveraged buyout transactions and advisory in deal origination, portfolio strategy, exit strategy and fund strategy. The appointment is the second that KCL has made in the last four months. In June, the firm appointed Sam Watkinson as an investment director.
• GE Commercial Finance’s corporate lending division continues to expand its London-based capital markets team with the appointment of Alpa Shah, who joined the company from DVB Bank. Shah joined the team as MD with a brief to lead development opportunities for its syndicated debt product within GE Commercial Finance capital markets platforms across Europe. She will focus on SME syndicated lending, asset-backed and asset-based lending, securitisation, as well as energy sector, real estate and transportation lending. Shah previously worked for four years at DVB Bank as senior vice-president and global head of distribution. Prior to that, she was vice-president in the structured finance lending business at the bank, joining DVB Bank after two years as a second vice-president at Chase Manhattan. She started her career at Mees Pierson, the wealth management specialist.