Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here with the Dealflow.
Hot off the presses this morning we have deals in advertising tech and healthcare sectors to tell you about, as well as an optimistic outlook for private equity in central and eastern Europe – a region we’ve featured heavily this week.
Marketing the deal. Carlyle today announced that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in digital marketing firm Incubeta.
London-headquartered Incubeta has experienced “significant growth” since its founding in 2004, according to a statement from Carlyle, with the firm having a team of 800 people across more than 22 locations worldwide. The statement added that Incubeta is one of just a few globally certified Google Marketing Platform (GMP) partners. GMP is an advertising technology platform that aims to help users create better marketing campaigns through data analytics.
Incubeta has worked with brands including Hyundai, Heineken, M&S and L’Oréal.
The Carlyle Europe Technology Partners (CETP) platform will aim to support Incubeta in boosting its international growth plan through development and acquisitions, as well as investing in its operations and proprietary technology.
“Incubeta has all the hallmarks we look for in our investments – exposure to a market benefiting from strong tailwinds, partnership with an experienced and driven management team, and multiple levers for growth, including international expansion and service line extension,” said Andrew Tan, director in the CETP investment advisory team, in a statement.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Carlyle has offices globally and had $369 billion of assets under management as of 30 September. It deploys capital in private equity, credit and investment solutions.
The Incubeta stake was not the only announcement from Carlyle this week. On Tuesday, it announced the launch of Telis Energy, a platform to develop renewable energy projects with a focus on solar in the UK, France, Spain and Germany and a view to expand to other markets in Europe.
London-based Telis will develop and partner on renewable energy projects and seek to play a “significant” role in the European energy transition, Carlyle said. The platform has a target project pipeline of more than 10GW in place by 2030.
Read more coverage of that launch here.
Supplemental deal. The Riverside Company announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling stake in BioDue, an Italian company that develops, manufactures and commercialises food supplements, medical devices and cosmetics.
BioDue, based in Sambuca, provides customers with a range of services from raw material sourcing development and formulation, through production, packaging, and regulatory affairs, to commercialisation.
Riverside plans to pursue a pan-European buy-and-build strategy with BioDue, and the firm has already identified several add-on targets, currently under evaluation. Additionally, the firm will seek to enhance BioDue’s “one-stop-shop” offering and expand its breadth of product ranges across galenic forms and therapeutic areas.
“BioDue brings in-house R&D and lab analysis capabilities, as well as well-run, state-of-the-art production sites with excess capacity,” said Rafael Alvarez-Novoa, partner of Riverside Europe, in a statement.
Update. In yesterday’s Dealflow, we referred to a study by Level 20 on women working in investment roles in European private equity and venture capital. We said Level 20 had “published the findings of its first study” into the subject. We should have said it had “updated” the findings – apologies.
Say what you CEE. We’ve written a lot about deals in central and eastern Europe this week, including Nina Lindholm’s in-depth look at Cordiant’s move for Poland’s Emitel, Aquiline portfolio company Everfield buying Latvia’s Blue Bridge Technologies and Value4Capital exiting Polish waste company Kom-Eko via CEE Equity Partners.
But it looks like that region could become even busier, according to a report from Bain & Company.
“CEE economies are growing fast as they continue catching up to the West, fuelled by a highly qualified labour force, and investments in nearshoring, infrastructure and the green economy,” said Jacek Poświata, managing partner at Bain & Company Poland/CEE, in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “After developing over the past two decades, PE funds now have all the pieces in place to capitalise on that trend.”
Of course, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine at the start of the year is on the minds of investors, and a missile landing yesterday in neighbouring Poland – killing two people – is unlikely to ease tensions, although the exact nature of what happened is still being investigated.
But investors are optimistic on the outlook, Maciej Ćwikiewicz, president of the board at PFR Ventures, which co-published the report, said in the statement (which came before news of the missile incident).
“There’s no denying that the war in neighbouring Ukraine is taking its toll on PE, particularly in fundraising and exit options. But there’s reason to believe this will be relatively short-lived: 86 percent of the people we surveyed expect the effect to fade away within one to two years. And once the war ends, they also foresee benefits for companies in the region doing business with Ukraine, particularly in the construction, industrials and business services sectors.”
On the move. We have a couple of people moves to finish out the Dealflow.
Agilitas Private Equity has added six people to its headcount, with four of the hires tasked with boosting the firm’s investment capabilities.
Alex Brebbia, Hamza Ben Abderahmen, Marcus Risland and Matteo Recchia join Agilitas’ investment team.
Brebbia joins as a senior member of the team. He was previously head of a pan-European private equity and development capital fund.
“I have been backing mid-sized businesses for 25 years and have long admired Agilitas and its proven ability to create long-term value in businesses through transformation,” Brebbia told PE Hub Europe. “It is a pleasure to join such a strong team of pan-European professionals. I look forward to leveraging my experience to further grow Agilitas’s platform and to aid the team in its ambition of having a positive impact on people and the planet.”
Meanwhile, GI Partners announced that Matt Barker has joined GI Data Infrastructure as a managing director to lead digital infrastructure investing in Europe. Barker will be based in London.
Barker’s previous role was a partner with 3i Infrastructure, where he led numerous digital infrastructure investments in multiple European countries.
That’s it from me – I’ll speak to you again tomorrow.
Cheers,
Craig
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