Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here with the Dealflow.
We open up today with a look at the latest US private equity firm to grow its presence in Europe by opening a London office and we look at a couple of big telecoms deals involving KKR. Elsewhere, a Permira-backed pharma firm has added to its product set and FSN Capital has formed a Danish technical installation company.
London rocks. One Rock Capital Partners has opened an office in London to help it pursue European investment opportunities.
The firm has appointed Telmo Valido as a partner to co-lead the London-based team with Kurt Beyer, a partner who relocated to the London office from New York.
“The establishment of One Rock’s presence in London is intended to bolster our European investment activity as well as oversight of our portfolio company operations across the region, and Telmo is the ideal leader for our efforts in Europe,” said One Rock managing partner Tony W Lee.
Read the full list of names on the London team here.
We’ve been writing a lot about US PE firms boosting their European presence of late. Check out our coverage of moves by Battery Ventures, Levine Leichtman Capital Partners and Thoma Bravo.
Calling in. There’s quite a bit going on telecoms, much of it involving KKR.
There are several reports that KKR is close to presenting a nonbinding offer for Telecom Italia’s (TIM) fixed-line network. The US private equity firm already owns a stake in TIM.
Such a deal is likely to meet with political opposition, however, as Italy’s government has expressed a preference for the network to become publicly owned.
We’ve asked KKR for comment.
Moving to mobile telecoms, we wrote back in November about how a group of funds led by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and KKR had entered into a strategic co-control partnership with telecoms firm Vodafone for the latter’s 81.7 percent stake in Frankfurt-listed Vantage Towers, a European telecoms tower company. The group then launched a voluntary takeover for the remaining 18 percent.
That process just got a little more complicated, however, after activist investor Elliott Management disclosed on Tuesday that it had bought 5.6 percent of the voting rights in Vantage.
We’ll keep you updated on that story as it develops.
Just the medicine. Permira-backed Neuraxpharm has completed the acquisition of two established product portfolios for central nervous system (CNS) disorders, pain, and vascular diseases from Sanofi.
Sanofi, based in Paris, France, is a global healthcare company.
Both portfolios include 17 molecules representing 38 brands that are marketed globally in over 50 countries for the benefit of patients across a large spectrum of diseases, according to a release.
FSN Capital Partners has partnered with 11 Danish technical installation companies to form InstallatørGruppen, a new market player within electricity, plumbing, optical fibre, ventilation, and cooling systems.
InstallatørGruppen will initially consist of 11 companies with a total turnover of around DKr1.3 billion (€175 million; $190 million). The firm aims to partner with local installers across Denmark and promote sustainability and energy efficiency.
The 11 installation companies are A-Comfort, Alvent Ventilation, Byens VVS & Blik, CH VVS, El Team Fyn, GL VVS, Jesper Hansen VVS, John Jensen VVS, Kjellerup Group, MH Elektric and WeCon.
Read more about FSN’s plans for InstallatørGruppen here.
That’s it from me. Nina Lindholm will be with you tomorrow to take you through to the weekend.
I’m going to celebrate my 40th birthday on Saturday by going to Twickenham to watch Scotland beat England in rugby’s Six Nations. And I reserve the right to edit that last sentence to say, ‘Scotland play England’, in the not-too-unlikely event that we lose…
Speak to you on Monday.
Cheers,
Craig