Robert Venes

Pantheon Ventures, manager of quoted investment trust Pantheon International Participations, has generated £157m of distributions in the full year to June 30 2006, up 74 percent.

DeepStream Technologies, a Welsh embedded sensor company, has raised £8.1m in second-round financing from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and 3i.

Four private equity firms are reportedly lining up second-round bids for Whitworths, a UK dried fruit snack company acquired by Gresham Private Equity in 2001.

The Madrid-based private equity firm has held a final close on its third fund, passing its original target of €200 million.

West Coast Capital, run by Sir Tom Hunter, has reportedly paid £15m for a 20% stake in European life science venture capital firm Merlin Biosciences.

CVC Capital Partners and Norway’s Ferd have had a CHF325 per share unsolicited offer for SIG rejected by the Swiss packaging firm’s board of directors.

Esprit Capital Partners has invested a further £0.7m in the £2.8m Series B funding of the UK fabless semiconductor company.

Merchant Equity Partners, a retail-focused private equity firm set up by a former managing director at Deutsche Bank, has made its first deal, investing up to £73 million in the loss-making retail unit of MFI Furniture Group.

The Nordic investor has been busy in the last week with the acquisition of two Swedish healthcare companies.

An all cash offer of A$3.50 per share values the Australian healthcare business at A$2.7 billion, almost 12 times the company’s 2006 EBITDA.