Ffenics transaction wins PEI Award
Thursday, March 1, 2012
In March 2012, the Ffenics transaction was announced as the winner of the Private Equity International Secondaries Deal of the Year for Europe for 2011.
The transaction completed in June 2011 with the launch of Ffenics I Fund, a closed ended vehicle funded by Paul Capital. Ffenics acquired a portfolio of private equity assets managed by Cognis Capital for approximately €70 million and the deal was the culmination of over a year of intense work by the Cognis team. Christopher Witkowsky, Editor of Private Equity International noted that the transaction was ‘a complicated deal, well executed’.
Myra Tabor, CEO of Cognis commented, ‘We are delighted that Paul Capital have won the award for this transaction. Delivering the deal was lengthy and extremely complicated and it is no coincidence that these transactions are few and far between. The Ffenics portfolio contains long-term, private equity style investments and our core objective was to balance the conflicting requirements of our investor base by delivering both a cash offer for investors who wished to exit and providing the option to roll into the new vehicle for investors who wished to remain invested in the portfolio. We believe the deal achieved our objectives and ranks very highly against market comparables. This result could only be secured through the exhaustive work that the Cognis team undertook in supporting the due diligence process and through Cognis agreeing to remain as the fund manager. We are very pleased with the positive feedback received from a number of our largest investors for delivering this creative solution.’
On winning the award Elaine Small, Partner at Paul Capital’s London office said ‘we are excited to be recognised by PEI’s readers for our acquisition of a private equity portfolio from Cognis Capital. Our team worked relentlessly to ensure a seamless transaction that would provide liquidity to Cognis investors while providing them the opportunity to create maximum value in their portfolio’.