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• Frank Summers has become head of integrated finance at Bank of Scotland, taking charge of the UK-wide Integrated Finance Partnerships team. He was previously head of the integrated finance team for Scotland. Andy Powell has been appointed head of integrated finance in London and leads a team responsible for originating mid-market MBOs in London. They both report into Mark Hammond, overall Head of Integrated Finance. Bank of Scotland Corporate’s integrated finance team has already completed seven deals this year including buy-outs for a number of the UK’s leading mid-market companies. David Lloyd Leisure, Lambert Smith & Hampton, Apollo Group and, most recently, community regeneration business Keepmoat.

• Peter Brooks, former managing partner at UK mid-market firm Sovereign Capital, has joined LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds TSB bank, as a director in its London office. Brooks has left his position as managing director of Pi Capital, an investment network he joined last July. He joined LDC’s London head Tim Farazmand at the beginning of this week, focusing on transactions requiring between £2m and £15m of equity in London and the South East. LDC is a sector generalist in the mid-market sector, investing between £2m and £100m of equity in any one transaction. Recent transactions for LDC include British Salt, Penn Pharmaceuticals, Cable Management, Commercial First, Direct Group and MB Aerospace. Brooks previously had spells at both LDC and Gresham Private Equity, another UK mid-market firm in the 1990s. He has spent more than 17 years in the private equity industry, including seven at Sovereign. His resignation from Sovereign in late 2005 was signalled in a letter to investors. Upon his departure, Sovereign handed over his responsibilities to senior partners Andrew Hayden and Ryan Robson. Originally known as Nash, Sells & Partners, the firm was renamed as Sovereign Capital in 2000.

Palamon Capital Partners, a pan-European buyout firm, has expanded its investment team with the appointment of Braam Verster as a vice president. Verster joined from McKinsey & Company, where he was an associate principal in its London private equity practice, working with both private equity firms and their portfolio companies across Europe, the US and Africa. Palamon’s London-based investment team comprises 12 investment professionals, managing €1.1bn of equity. Recent investments include D&D Media Group, Cambridge Education Group, Si Collection and Retail Decisions. Louis Elson, co-founder of Palamon, recently told Thomson Financial that the firm was looking to appoint up to four new investment professionals over by mid-2008.