PAI likes taste of frozen dessert firm; ITP takes majority stake in NetRom

Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here with Thursday’s Dealflow.

We’re really getting the sense that deal volumes are picking up here, with plenty to report across a range of sectors so far this week. Today, we look at PAI acquiring a frozen desserts firm, ITP investing in a software engineering company and SCF Partners buying an offshore energy engineering firm.

Elsewhere, a Five Arrows- and Insight Partners-backed company made a couple of acquisitions and there’s an exit by Gilde Healthcare, plus more.

Early dessert. PAI Partners will acquire La Compagnie des Desserts (LCDD), a premium frozen desserts supplier from Argos Wityu.

LCDD is headquartered in Lézignan-Corbières, France. The firm produces artisanal ice cream and premium frozen pastries to over 23,000 food service clients across Europe, mainly in France, Spain, and the UK.

PAI will partner with LCDD via its PAI Mid-Market Fund (PAI MMF) to expand its presence and accelerate its international expansion, both organically and through acquisitions, according to a release.

“The company is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the growing demand for outsourced dessert preparation across hotels, restaurants and catering businesses, driven by their need to innovate and manage labour shortages in the industry,” said Stefano Drago, founding partner at PAI MMF.

Read more on the deal here.

Coding. Investcorp Technology Partners (ITP) has agreed to take a majority stake in Benelux software engineering firm NetRom Software. NetRom’s founders, management team and IceLake Capital will retain an interest.

NetRom builds business-critical software products and provides development support to firms in Western Europe and North America, including VodafoneZiggo, Transdev and LeasePlan. It is headquartered in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

The firm has more than doubled its revenues in the last five years, according to a statement.

Check out more on the deal here.

Offshore energy. SCF Partners has invested in Global E&C, an engineering firm focused on the offshore energy sector based in Aberdeen, Scotland. The firm employs more than 1,000 people across the UK.

“We invested in Global E&C because we believe the team has the energy, the capability, and the data management technology to become a leading player in the decarbonisation of offshore and onshore infrastructure,” said Colin Welsh, partner at SCF, in a statement.

Global E&C was formerly owned by Global Energy Group, which will retain its other Aberdeen-based energy businesses.

Tracking. Five Arrows- and Insight Partners-backed data and analytics firm Kpler has acquired a pair of ship-tracking data and maritime analytics providers, MarineTraffic and FleetMon.

Kpler has now made five acquisitions in the last 18 months. It secured over $200 million in investment from private equity firms Five Arrows and Insight Partners last year.

Exit. Gilde Healthcare’s private equity fund has agreed to sell its majority stake in Zetacom to Avedon Capital.

Zetacom is a systems integrator for critical communication systems and networking and security products. The firm is headquartered in Zoetermeer, Netherlands.

Following this deal, Avedon will combine Zetacom with Detron.

This potential merger will create one of the “largest independent managed services providers” in the Netherlands, according to a release.

Read more about the firms in our full coverage here.

Fibre. Syntagma Capital has entered talks with Nexans to buy its LAN/data centre (LAN/DC) and Telecom/Fibre (FTTx) division.

Nexans, based in Paris, France, designs, manufactures, and distributes smart connectivity products based on optical fibre and copper technologies to data centres, smart buildings, and telecom operators. The firm operates across its eight sites located in France, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Morocco and China. It has around €200 million in revenues.

“Despite a challenging M&A market, we are continuing to find attractive opportunities to invest our capital while providing sellers with divestiture solutions for complex carve outs where speed and certainty are of the essence,” said Moult.

Read more on the deal here.

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Spurring. And finally, there’s another rumour of private equity interest in a European football team. Jahm Najafi, chair of MSP Sports Capital, is working with investors to make a bid for London’s Tottenham Hotspur, according to people with knowledge of the plans spoken to by the Financial Times.

The offer would value the club’s equity at around $3 billion, plus $750 million of debt on the club’s books, the report said.

Just a couple of weeks ago, MSP had been touted as looking to make an investment in Everton Football Club.

That’s it from me – Nina Lindholm will be with you tomorrow to take you through to the weekend.