Last week in brief... We only reported one private equity deal this week. An investment in a hospital in Uganda by XSML Capital. The Dutch private equity fund manager is backing TMR International Hospitalin Naalya, a suburb of the country's capital, Kampala on behalf of their second fund, the $50 million Africa Rivers Fund. The capital will be used by TMR to develop relationships with more insurance companies and corporate clients, thereby extending the reach of its healthcare offering to a wider population. In addition, the hospital plans to invest in more essential medical equipment which will enable it to provide higher levels of healthcare services.

Independent power producer Globaleq, in partnership with UK development finance institution, CDC, its majority shareholder, is backing Malindi Solar Group with debt. Between them, the two organizations are investing $66 million of debt in the Kenyan project, which will be used to finance the construction of a 52MWp solar voltaic power plant. CDC is providing $50 million of the 16-year financing with Globeleq, the sponsor of the project, providing the balance of $16 million.

There were also a couple of deals unravelling last week. Firstly, CDC and A.P. Moller Capital's deal to acquire Zambia's Copperbelt Energy Corporation has fallen through. In February this year, the UK's development finance institution and the new infrastructure fund submitted a bid worth approximately $378 million to the Board of publicly-listed Copperbelt Energy Corporation subject to certain conditions, some of which had not been met by the planned close date of the transaction last week. These primarily concerned the acquirers' failure to reach agreement with Zambia's state-owned power company ZESCO in relation to the change of control in CEC and its bulk supply agreement with the company.

Secondly, developments last week put paid to any thoughts that the future of Abraaj's investment management business seemed largely sealed by the emerging market investor's deal with Colony Capital. According to Bloomberg, a group of investors in Abraaj's $990 million sub-Saharan fund are pushing for a different fund manager, a move that's complicating the broader sale of the Abraaj's asset management business.

At the same time, both Colony Capital's original $229.3 million and a subsequent revised offer for Abraaj's African, Latin American and Turkey funds management business have now been rejected. By mid-week, Reuters reported that a newly-constituted liquidation committee for Abraaj would be considering bids from Cerberus Capital Management, York Capital Management and Abu Dhabi Financial Group. On Friday evening, Bloomberg revealed that Cerberus has now pulled out of the bidding process entirely. We'll have to wait a little longer to see how this pans out.

Anglo American Platinum and South Africa's Public Investment Corporation are anchoring AP Ventures, an independent venture capital fund which will back applications for Platinum Group Metals. Each organization is committing $100 million to the new venture fund which will be the first investment structure dedicated to investing in pioneering technologies and businesses harnessing the unique high performance characteristics of Platinum Group Metals.

AP Ventures is being led by Andrew Hinkly and the team which had been part of Anglo American Platinum's PGM Investment Program which was originally set up in 2014. Since then, the program invested a total of $60 million in early stage and growth capital investments, which will now become part of AP Ventures' portfolio. Once the fund starts investing, they'll be joined by companies that develop patentable technologies using PGMs in areas such as hydrogen infrastructure, fuel-cell electric mobility, energy storage platforms, water purification and medical devices.

Finally this week, some news about a new company. Partners Group and South African private equity firm Convergence Partners have teamed up to launch a new private markets firm, Helical Capital Partners. The new firm, with operations based in South Africa, is led by former Convergence COO, Craig Beney and Carlos Ferreira, formerly the CEO of Fairstone Capital.

Helical Capital Partners will sponsor a planned $200 million to $300 million fund raised from South Africa's institutional investor community over the course of the next two years. The fund will be managed by Partners Group and will closely mirror the future investments made Partners Group Global Value Fund 2017. The fund will integrate primaries, secondaries and direct investments into its strategy and back opportunities across private equity, private real estate, private infrastructure and private debt.

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

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 opportunities in emerging and frontier markets. Mr. Cunningham holds a Bachelors degree from Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.

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