Polish investment firm Enterprise Investors have made two highly successful exits recently – Magellan and Kruk. In the first case, the company reaped a 10x returns on its share sale in Magellan, a speciality finance company founded in 1999. EI has sold its 33.79 per-cent stake in the company – half its former stake, or 2,211,250 shares [...]

CapMan Russia made a first close worth EUR97 mln on its newly established CapMan Fund II late March. Nearly 3 per cent of that investment has been made in-house – by the investment team at CapMan Russia and by CapMan Plc – while the remaining has come from 10 other LPs – both new and [...]

Qiwi, Russia’s leading payment service provider is considering IPO on NASDAQ in mid 2013 that may value the company at USD 1bln. The company named JP Morgan and Credit Suisse as joint bookrunners, filed to raise USD 100 million last week, and plans to offer up to 30% of its share. Pricing terms remained undisclosed for [...]

Paradigm Investments and TA Venture have participated in Series A funding for IQcard, a pre-paid card operator in Russia; in this round of financing, they have joined existing investors Direct Group and Fastlane Ventures to invest a combined USD2.5 mln in the startup company. The funds will be used to develop their internal customer resource management [...]

The Russian Direct Investment Fund is believed to be actively seeking German investments in Russian markets in order to leverage their own USD10 bln fund by attracting matching investments from strategic investors outside the country. German investment alone is expected to reach up to 20 per cent of the overall foreign investment target over the [...]

CEE-centric investment firm Abris Capital Partners have met their hard-cap target of EUR450 mln for their Fund II. There were 21 investors for this fund against 18 for Fund I; of the 21, approximately half the LPs were from Europe, with the remaining being spread out over Australia, the Middle East and United States. Notably [...]

Dubai-based Abraaj Capital – and the largest PE firm in the Middle East – is considering the sale of its equity in Turkish health insurance unit Acibadem Sigorta. The JV is jointly held (50:50) by Abraaj and the founder of Acibadem Group - Mehmet Ali Aydinlar. Abraaj has already sold its stake in Acibadem Saglik – [...]

Russian VC player Runa Capital invested USD 8 mln into uBank, a provider of mobile payment solutions in Russia. Primarily targeting utilities payment, the Android version has already been downloaded by more than 250,000 users from Google Play. In addition, it also comes pre-installed on the Fly and Samsung smartphones. An iOS version is already under development [...]

Czech Republic financial advisory services company Fincentrum has been bought in majority by Capital Dynamics and Arx Equity Partners. The sale is estimated at CZK 750 mln, which takes the company’s value to CZK 1.2 bln (USD 60mln). Other investors include Lubor Žalman, former CEO of Raiffeisenbank, and two of the company’s managers - Petr Stuchlík and Martin Nejedlý. [...]

Runa Capital and Point Nine Capital are jointly investing USD 2 mln in Mambu, a German technology company that caters to the microfinancing industry. They are joined by existing investor Kizoo, and the funding will go towards product development, talent acquisition and global expansion. Mambu (www.mambu.com) Mambu is a Berlin-based enabler for the microfinancing industry. [...]

Qiwi, a leading payment solutions provider in the Russian market, will launch a venture division to support companies that develop products and services for its primary markets. The announcement comes weeks ahead of its IPO slated for Spring of 2013. Qiwi stakeholders are already experienced in VC funding; among them is Andrey Romanenko, the co-owner and [...]

The EBRD has decided to go for a second course of the Avallon MBO Fund with a kitty of EUR 27 mln this time. The transaction-specific fund will focus on MBOs and buy-ins in the small to medium-sized businesses, and aims to hit EUR 107 mln in investments. The Avallon II is following in the [...]

PPF Group, a prominent player in the CEE financial services market, has bought back a 27.5 per cent stake in its PE business from Assicurazioni Generali, the Italian insurance company with which it partnered to form Generali PPF Holding (GPH) in 2007. The deal involved the entire investment by Generali in the PPF Partners I Fund. [...]

Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank by assets, will purchase 75 per cent of Yandex.Money from Yandex, the 100 percent shareholder. The company was originally launched by the latter and PayCash in 2002; Yandex subsequently bought out PayCash’s 50 per cent stake in the company for around USD 5 mln. Yandex will retain the remaining 25 per [...]

Highlander Partners, a Dallas, Texas-based investment company, has concluded its fourth investment deal in Poland through the purchase of ProService AT, a financial services company specializing in transfer agent services to large-scale funds – such as pension and investment) and individual distributors of financial products in Poland. Highlander has purchased the company from Skarbiec Asset Management, which [...]

PineBridge Investments recently made two significant transactions – one in Turkey and one in Poland – of considerable impact. The Polish investment was in the form of purchasing additional stake of 25 per cent in Promedica24, a leading provider of services for the aged and general household care needs in the local and European market. [...]

IMI.VC, the investment company founded by Igor Matsanyuk, has bagged USD 75 mln from one of the early investors in Mail.ru - Mikhail Vinchel. Along with Gregory Finger, another Mail.ru investor in the early stage, the three form the board of directors for IMI.VC. Social gaming player Game Insight and Farminers (mobile incubator) are products of [...]

Business angel company Startobaza and VC fund Bars Ventures have co-invested in cloud accounting application company Nebo, meaning Sky in Russian. The target company has developed accounting services in the cloud for accounting professionals to handle payroll taxes, and can be integrated with their clients’ banking systems. The service is unique in that it allows [...]

Russia’s first virtual bank gets a boost from Ukrainian buyout firm Horizon Capital as the latter committed USD 40 mln towards Tinkoff Credit Systems Bank (TCS Bank). Majority stakeholder Oleg Tinkov is also joined by Baring Vostok (PE Fund IV), Vostok Nafta and Goldman Sachs in this unique Russian venture designed to tap the local [...]

One-year-old Turkish private equity investment company Bosphera PE is planning its first close in Q1 2013. The fund target is USD 350 mln, and the company expects the first close to be around USD 100 mln (EUR 77.6 mln); the outer target date for the first close is April 2013, with the final close expected [...]