We kick off this morning with a lottery deal. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board has agreed to sell its majority stake in Premier Lotteries Ireland, the operator of the Irish National Lottery, to La Française des Jeux.
Then I want to recap some deals from the financial services sector. First, we had Carlyle agreeing to acquire motor finance platform Evolution Funding. We also saw two deals targeting asset managers: Apera Asset Management took a minority investment from Kudu Investment Management and Permira announced it will acquire a 40 percent stake in AltamarCAM Partners.
Since we’re rounding things up, we also have a story featuring seven recent waste management and recycling deals.
Jackpot
Let’s start with a game of chance. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board has signed a definitive agreement to sell its majority stake in Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI), the operator of the Irish National Lottery, to La Française des Jeux (FDJ).
FDJ will acquire the entire share capital of Premier Lotteries Ireland for an enterprise value of €350 million, according to FDJ.
PLI, headquartered in Dublin, holds the licence to operate the Irish National Lottery until 2034. Ontario Teachers’ invested in PLI in 2014.
“As long-term investors, we aim to build stronger companies that create value for the communities they serve and PLI has generated record levels of sales and contributions to Good Causes,” said Iñaki Echave, senior MD at Ontario Teachers’.
FDJ is a lottery and online gaming operator based in Paris, France.
This isn’t Ontario Teachers’ first time selling a lottery operator. In November 2022, the Canadian pension plan agreed to sell Camelot UK Lotteries to Allwyn, a European lottery operator. Watford, England-based Camelot UK Lotteries has been the operator of the National Lottery since its launch in 1994. Ontario Teachers’ acquired Camelot in 2010.
Financial services
Let’s move over to the financial services deals. Carlyle agreed to acquire Evolution Funding, a technology-led motor finance platform that connects car dealers and auto finance providers with multiple lenders.
Carlyle will invest alongside Evolution’s founders and existing investor LDC, which invested in the company in 2019.
Carlyle Europe Technology Partners (CETP) V will provide equity for the investment.
Headquartered in Chesterfield in the UK, Evolution has approximately 500 employees and supports over 4,000 dealer forecourts, including national car dealerships such as Marshall, Sytner Group and Trust Ford as well as online-only used car dealers such as Cinch and Cazoo.
This week we also saw two deals including asset managers as investment targets. Apera Asset Management took a minority investment from Kudu Investment Management, a provider of permanent capital services to independent asset and wealth managers, via an Apera affiliate.
Apera will continue to be majority partner-owned and led by founding partners Klaus Petersen, David Wilmot, and Robert Shaw.
“The environment in Europe is receptive to credit solutions like Apera’s, and long-term prospects for European credit funds are highly promising,” Petersen said. “Kudu emerged as our preferred strategic partner when we began exploring paths to accelerate Apera’s growth initiatives and to diversify our client base.”
Apera will use Kudu’s investment to accelerate the growth of its business, among other internal uses, according to a release.
The second asset management deal was Permira announcing it will acquire, via Permira Growth Opportunities II, a 40 percent stake in AltamarCAM Partners from a mix of external financial partners and existing managing partners.
AltamarCAM is a private asset manager and services provider with over €17.9 billion in assets under management. It has offices in Madrid, Cologne, New York, Santiago de Chile, Barcelona, London and Munich.
“We have closely followed them grow the platform and it is clear that our expertise is a great fit with what comes next – we now look forward to partnering with the team to develop and further internationalise the business,” said Pedro López, head of Spain at Permira.
Waste management
For your weekend reading, my colleague Irien Joseph rounded up deals in the waste management and recycling sectors. In the first half of 2023, there was an increase in activity in the sectors, with a slew of deals registered.
Ardian, Nordic Capital and ECP are among the firms interested in the segment. You can read Irien’s full story here.
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