Last week in brief... After something of a drought in fundraising news over the past couple of months, the DFI's are back either committing or mulling commitments to funds. The European Investment Bank is evaluating an investment in BluePeak Private Capital's maiden fund, a private credit fund that will make credit or “credit-like” investments including mezzanine loans, convertible loans, and investments in preferred equity instruments across the continent. If approved, the fund, which was launched late last year by Walid Cherif and Adam Hadidi, two former executives from Gulf Capital’s credit investment business, will be better off by $25 million.

BlueOrchard Finance has announced the launch of an MSME Debt fund anchored by its parent company Schroders as well as development finance institutions JICA, CDC, and DFC. Between them, the fund’s initial investors are committing $140 million to the fund which has a final close goal of $350 million. The fund will provide loan financing to financial institutions across emerging and frontier markets so they can continue to finance micro, small and medium businesses and help them weather the global pandemic.

Having backed its predecessor, FMO is evaluating an investment in Berkeley Energy's second Africa-focused renewable energy fund. The Dutch development bank will commit a little over $20 million to the fund, AREF II, which is apparently aiming to hold its first close by the end of the year.

In deal news, we start with an exit. 8 Miles is selling its 25% stake in Eagle Chemicals, a family-owned resin manufacturer based in Egypt to another private equity firm, Ezdehar Management and FMO. The company enjoys a 60% share of Egypt’s market for resin supplies and exports its products to clients in 80 additional countries around the world.

EXEO Capital and Stellenbosch Graduate Institute are joining forces to acquire the Pearson Institute of Higher Education, an education business with 12 campuses in South Africa. The seller is Britain’s Pearson Group, owner of several education media brands. EXEO Capital forecasts a 400% expansion in the sector across Africa in the next 10 years which has created the need for a platform with quality education businesses as delivery partners to meet the anticipated demand.

Staying in South Africa, German private equity firm Emerging Energy Corporation has acquired a stake in South Africa’s Sustainable Power Generation, a clean energy company operating projects across the continent. The terms of the deal were not made available.

DOB Equity is investing additional capital in Nairobi-based Mr. Green Africa, a plastics recycling firm it initially backed in August last year. According to the impact investment firm, the fresh financing will be used by the firm to invest in technology and make consumers part of the recyclables supply chain and meet increasing levels of demand for its products from local and multinational firms in Kenya.

DPI has three new partners. The three - Babacar Ka, Takudzwa Mutasa, and Marc Stoneham - are all current executives at the firm, and their promotion to the firm's partnership comes on the heels of a number of achievements for the firm in 2020. Their election lifts the number of investment and operational partners at the firm to 9 in total.

And finally, global law firm Dentons has launched the first of five planned combinations with new law firms that were announced in September. The firm in question is LEAD Advogados, a 22-lawyer full-service firm based in Luanda, Angola. Now trading under the name Dentons LEAD, the firm will be led by one of LEAD Advogados's founding partners, Djamila Pinto de Andrade.

That's it for this week. As always, you can review these and other stories by clicking through to this week's preview edition of the newsletter.

Allan Cunningham

Allan Cunningham is a senior media executive who has spent the last 15 years of his career working for some of the world’s most respected M&A and Private Equity media companies including Dow Jones’s publications Private Equity Analyst and VentureWire and most recently, The Deal. He has built a number of successful digital and event content businesses, both subscription and sponsor-supported, delivering information and content-marketing services to clients in the M&A and broader deal ecosystem. He recently struck out on his own and launched Rowayton Press, a multi-platform media company focused on the private capital

Subscribe to Directory
Write an Article

Highlight

Axon moves into Cloud Technology

by Axon Partners Group

cloud technology axon

Indexa Capital Group aumenta sus ingreso...

by Indexa Capital

Indexa Capital Group, sociedad matriz de Indexa Capital AV, Bewater As...

Photos Stream