Permira bolsters IR

Chris Davison, the former head of research at AltAssets, a private equity research firm affiliated to placement agent Almeida Capital, has joined the PR and investor relations team at Permira headed by partner Philip Bassett.

Although Permira closed its latest fund on €5.1bn in October 2003, fundraising is now seen as a full time job for the more sophisticated private equity teams, which are constantly communicating with existing investors and looking for new sources of institutional capital. The Permira team also comprises Nicci Pederson and Greg Shirley.

In a separate move, Barnaby Noble has bucked the trend by moving from Permira to French engineering conglomerate Alstom, where he will be head of mergers and acquisitions and report directly to Henri Poupart-Lafarge, chief financial officer of Alstom. Noble was previously a principal at Permira, where he worked on transactions including Hogg Robinson and Whittan Storage Systems.

After receiving an MBA, in 1988 he was hired First Boston in New York before joining consultants McKinsey in Paris in 1992. He then returned to Credit Suisse First Boston in Paris in 1996 as a vice-president of investment banking.