Private Exits

Close Brothers Private Equity has sold U.K. contract interiors company Gradus Ltd. for £41 million to company management, which is backed by Bank of Scotland Integrated Finance. Close Brothers sponsored a £30 million management buyout of Gradus in December 2001 from the Headlam Group.

Doughty Hanson & Co. Real Estate has sold Maximilianhöfe, a flagship property on Munich’s Maximilianstrasse, for €270 million to Quinlan Private. The site was cleared and redeveloped into 20,000 square meters of office space, retail space and a build-to-suit rehearsal stage facility for the State Opera.

Key Communications, a private equity entity managed by PC Management, has sold West Virginia Wireless to Verizon Wireless for an undisclosed amount. The deal includes West Virginia Wireless’ spectrum licenses and related operations, which cover a population of 1.2 million people.

Nordic Partners has agreed to sell Denmark-based Dangaard Telecom AS to Brightpoint Inc. (Nasdaq: CELL) for approximately $300 million in Brightpoint stock. The total deal is valued at around $600 million, including $300 million in assumed debt and the 30 million Brightpoint shares.

Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) has paid $1.08 billion to increase its stake in I-Flex Solutions Ltd. to 82.9 percent. Oracle had announced in 2005 that it would acquire a 61 percent stake, by acquiring Citigroup Venture Capital’s 40% stake, plus an additional 20 percent from public shareholders. A recent regulatory filing, however, indicates that it only held 54.8 percent. I-Flex is an India-based maker of banking software.

Sithe Global Power LLC, a platform acquisition company owned by The Blackstone Group and Reservoir Capital, announced that it will explore a sale of a waste coal-fired electric generation facility in Pennsylvania called the River Hill Power Company.