Last week Runa Capital, a venture firm operating globally from its offices in Moscow and San Francisco, announced a €3 million investment in MariaDB Corporation, a global software vendor specializing in high availability, high performance and highly scalable open source database solutions.

Headquartered in Espoo, Finland, MariaDB (also known as SkySQL) aims to become “the world’s premier open source database platform.”

According to the company, “much progress has already been made as the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, which used to dominate in the web development, is now turning into LEMP (where “E” stands for Nginx and “M” for MariaDB) as MySQL is being replaced with MariaDB in key Linux distributions and Nginx web-server is rapidly gaining market share among the top web sites.”

Last year, MariaDB received $20 million from Intel Capital and other European and US investors.

“There was some room reserved for a value-adding strategic investor,” Runa Capital PR Director Liliana Pertenava told East-West Digital news.

“MariaDB will largely benefit from Runa’s connections with Parallels and portfolio companies NGINX and Jelastic, by further expanding the achieving adoption of MariaDB in crucial enterprise architectures,” she explained.

Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, MariaDB and MySQL creator, has long history with the Runa team and an advisor to Jelastic, Pertenava added.

“Despite all the hype about BigData and NoSQL, classical Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) are here to stay. The global RDBMS market, which amounts to some $26 billion, is growing by 10% yearly over the period 2012-2016,” Pertenava noted.

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The total value of private equity deals in Africa in 2014 hit $8.1 billion, the second-highest level on record.

Fueled by population growth and increased political stabilization, global PE interest is rising on the continent. Last year’s total was just shy of the 2007 record of $8.3 billion, according to African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA). The figure is also a stark improvement over the $4.3 billion and $2 billion distributed in 2013 and 2012, respectively.

Despite the lofty figure, three companies were responsible for $5 billion for the total.

These companies include Nigeria-based IHS; Azura Power, an energy firm founded by Nigerian and U.K. entrepreneurs; and George Soros-backed Helios Towers Africa.

Approximately 20% of private equity firms are “now expressing serious interest in investing in Africa,” private equity veteran Marleen Groen told The Daily Star in Lebanon. “[Africa] offers investors less competitive investments in a diversified market where many countries show ongoing GDP growth of over 7% per annum.”

The Emerging Markets Private Equity Association also suggests that the continent’s pension fund industry could become a significant source of investment in the coming decade. The trade group projects that pension funds in 10 large African economies are valued as high as $379 billion. The group projects that up to $30 billion could be shifted to private equity investment.

Consulting giant McKinsey sees higher potential.

In 2014, the firm projected that assets invested into African private equity deals could top $50 billion over the next decade, with most of the capital directed to the continent’s most developed and liberalized economies.

Source – Finalternatives

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Brazilian asset management firm Peninsula Investimentos is launching a distressed-asset fund.

Backed by Credit Suisse Group, the fund is expected to be around R$500 million, or approximately $155 million. The company has brought on five new staff members for the effort, according to media reports quoting CEO Antonio Quintella, and will begin raising the fund among domestic as well as foreign investors during the second half of the year.

Brazil’s economic downturn is through to be generating opportunities for distressed investing within the country’s highly leveraged corporate sector, which saw a 34% surge in bankruptcy filings in the 12 months through February 2015.

Economists predict Brazil will return to recession in 2015, weighed down by the strong U.S. dollar and low energy and commodity prices. Peninsula will concentrate on distressed assets across a number of Brazilian industries, including construction and consumer products and those with high levels of dollar-denominated debt.

Credit Suisse holds a minority, non-voting stake in the company, according to Bloomberg. The Swiss bank helped Quintella, who led the Americas for Credit Suisse, form Peninsula in 2012.

The firm now employs more than 40 people and has approximately $775 million in assets under management deployed primarily in a liquid-instrument hedge fund.

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Carlyle Group has closed on a new international energy fund with commitments of $2.5 billion from 160 investors, according to media reports. The new fund, which surpassed Carlyle’s initial $1.5 billion target, will invest exclusively in oil and gas projects located outside the U.S.

Carlyle is in good company. Since the collapse in oil prices during 2014, a number of other private equity firms, including Blackstone, KKR, Goldman Sachs, Apollo and Riverstone, forming funds to invest in equity and/or debt securities of energy businesses that have been hammered by the drop in prices. The high-yield bonds issued by energy firms over the past several years to pay for exploration, production and development have come under particular pressure.

The new fund is the largest initial fund launch since Carlyle was founded nearly thirty years ago, according to a company statement.

Carlyle is one of the largest private equity companies in the world, with assets under management of $194.5 billion as of Dec. 31, 2014.

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Carlyle International Energy Partners (CIEP) announced plans to purchase Sterling Resources’ Romanian gas fields. The news comes just a few days after the private equity fund announced it had raised $2.5 billion to purchase global energy assets.

With the slump in oil prices hammering Sterling’s revenue streams, the deal allowed Carlyle to snap up at least four license blocks in the Black Sea. CEIP will pay Sterling $42.5 million at the deal’s completion. The sale features license blocks 13 Pelican, 15 Midia, 25 Luceafarul and 27 Muridava, structured as a corporate sale of the Sterling’s wholly-owned subsidiary Midia Resources SRL.

The deal will likely close at the end of Q2 2015, assuming it meets typical transactions conditions and receives Romanian regulatory approval.

The Sterling deal is the fourth that more than CIEP investors have backed. The fund’s managing director Marcel van Poecke expects to invest into up to 12 projects within the next two to three years.

“A large part of the investments will be done this year and next year because of the market conditions. Most will be invested in upstream in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America,” Van Poecke told Reuters.

Meanwhile, Sterling is expected to focus on its operations in the North Sea or seek a buyer as it faces increased debt.

‘Sterling has had a presence in the Romanian Black Sea since 1997. As operator, we discovered the Ana gas field in 2007 and built up further contingent and prospective resources through further drilling, seismic acquisition and interpretation, and gaining new licences,” said Jake Ulrich, Sterling’s Chief Executive Officer.

“While we believe firmly in the significant future potential of these assets, we face material ongoing well commitments on our licences and potentially very material development costs which are inappropriate for a company of our size. We believe that the full value can only be realized by a company with much greater financial strength and with a longer term investment horizon,” he continued. “We have therefore decided to sell in order to focus our financial resources on the UK North Sea. Our team in Romania have served Sterling well and we wish them every success for the future under CIEP’s ownership. The sale will leave Sterling as a predominantly UK business focused on the high quality Breagh field, plus contingent resources with very minor ongoing costs in the Netherlands. We expect that this refocusing and simplification of our portfolio will make the company a more attractive candidate for a merger or corporate sale, benefitting all stakeholders.”

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Global alternative investments powerhouse Carlyle Group has closed on its third European technology and media buyout fund, raising €656 million. It is the company’s largest such fund to date.

The fund, named Carlyle Europe Technology Partners III, shows the global appetite for tech and media companies in the region. It began raising money a year ago and has already made two investments – Dutch networking specialist Expereo and Spanish IT company Telvent, according to a Carlyle statement.

Half the capital in the new fund consists of commitments from investors in the company’s second European tech fund, which raised €522 million in 2008. The majority of the fund’s investors are based in Europe and the U.S.

As with the prior two funds, the new vehicle’s primary investment focus will be on emerging European telecommunications, media and technology companies and other companies that offer growth opportunities through innovative technologies and intellectual property.

“We have been investing in small-cap buy-outs in the European technology sector for 15 years through various industry cycles,” noted Michael Wand, the head of Carlyle Europe Technology Partners, in a press release. “During this time, we have been involved with some leading European technology companies and we look forward to supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs in their global growth ambitions.”

The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with $193 billion of assets under management across 130 funds and 156 fund of funds vehicles as of March 31, 2015. It is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol CG.

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Former TPG-Axon partner Wesley Wong is prepping an Asian-themed long/short equity fund for a third-quarter 2015 launch.

Wong’s Oxbow Capital Management (HK) is reportedly in advanced discussions with Reservoir Capital Management regarding a $150 million stake, according to a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources. It would be Reservoir’s first seed investment in an Asian-based startup, the article noted.

Joining Wong in the Hong Kong-based venture will be COO Vishal Tourani and Yeo Keng Swee, who will head trading.

Wong was a partner at $3 billion TPG-Axon until he retired in 2014 amid a restrucuting of the fund’s Asian operations. TPG-Axon was co-founded by former Goldman Sachs partner Dinakar Singh.

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Oceanwood Capital Management has raised $250 million in a new hedge fund to capitalize on economic recovery in Europe.

Oceanwood has raised the capital from existing investors and plans to have a $350 million final close for the fund in September, according to a Reuters report.

The new fund, named Oceanwood Peripheral European Select Opportunities Fund, will invest across asset classes with a primary focus on financial sector stocks in countries typically considered among Europe’s weakest, as Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

It aims to return 15-20% annually, Reuters said, and will be managed by Oceanwood founder Christopher Gate and Julian Garcia Woods.

With more than two-thirds of European hedge funds below $200 million in size, the Oceanwood launch is one of the largest to start this year. The launch is also conspicuous because of its timing, coming as the Greece debt crisis comes to a head and financial markets prepare for a range of potential outcomes, including default and ejection from the euro.

However, volatility is traditionally seen as an opportunity for hedge funds, and the aggressive quantitative easing under way by the European Central Bank will likely support financial assets for some time to come.

London-based Oceanwood is a $2.2 billion multi-strategy hedge fund founded by Gate and spun out from Tudor Group in 2006. Its flagship Global Opportunities Fund, which has returned 10.2% so far in 2015, manages assets for high profile pension funds, such as School Employees Retirement System of Ohio and Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, and the government of the country’s Sakhalin island have signed a deal to set up a fish exchange for declared purposes such as replacement of nearly all fish imports in the Russian market with Russian-caught fish.

The project, which involves selling a minimum of 50% of fish brought to Sakhalin ports via online auctions, is expected to bring import substitution to 90% by 2018.

Other targets are to ensure a minimum 25% increase in fish export revenues and transparent pricing in governmental purchases of fish, Sberbank said in a statement.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, and ride-hailing app service Uber have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore ways of co-developing payment technology.

A statement from Sberbank credited the lender with possessing some of the world’s most advanced and secure mobile payment technologies.

Uber sees “innovative business programmes” carried out by Sberbank as “effective means” of simplifying formalities for starting a business as a self-employed driver, the statement said.

It said Sberbank, on the other hand, would be able to offer various car loan opportunities to drivers working for Uber, which is a company headquartered in San Francisco and operating across the world.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

VTB Capital, the investment arm of Russia’s second-biggest bank VTB, has enlarged its international record of advice on mergers and acquisitions with the first M&A deal it helped to carry through in Germany.

VTB Capital was the exclusive financial adviser to Prevent Group, a German manufacturer of car components and other products, in its acquisition of ES Automobilguss GmbH, also a maker of car parts, the Moscow-based investment firm said in a statement.

“In 2015, VTB Capital has achieved a record 40% market share in Russian investment banking having closed 11 M&A deals,” the statement quoted Riccardo Orcel, head of global banking at VTB Capital, as saying.

“The Prevent Group transaction is the first M&A deal in Germany and follows a series of deals in the UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Turkey, China, India and the US,” Orcel said.

Prevent and ES Automobilguss have major global automotive companies, including Volkswagen, among their customers. Prevent’s clientele also includes BMW and Mercedes, and among ES Automobilguss’s clients there are General Motors, Ford, Porsche and the Renault-Nissan alliance.

The VTB group is one of five Russian state-controlled banks that have been under Ukraine-related Western sanctions since July 2014. The sanctions have cut the banks off from long-term international financing.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, has agreed to lend $340m to Russia’s biggest shipping company for an Arctic oil shipment project.

The money, to be obtained by the Sofcomflot shipping group under a 14-year loan agreement with Sberbank CIB, the bank’s investment arm, would be used to build an infrastructure for shipping out crude all year round from the Novoportovskoye oil field in the Yamal Peninsula in northwestern Siberia, which is being developed by Gazprom.

Ice-class shuttle tankers would collect the oil at a terminal in the Gulf of Ob, Sberbank CIB and Sovcomflot said in a joint statement.

Sberbank Europe AG, a Sberbank subsidiary, is involved in the deal.

“This is the first time that [Sberbank] has provided long-term financing to Sovcomflot Group,” said Sovcomflot executive vice-president and chief financial officer Nikolay Kolesnikov.

The head of transport and infrastructure at Sberbank CIB, Dimitri Casvigny, said the agreement “highlights our aim to participate in initiatives of strategic importance to the national economy”. “We are very pleased that we were able to support the creation of a fleet of Arctic tankers,” he said.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Dubai-based online real estate dealer Bayut.com has raised $20m in the third of three rounds of venture investment.

Coming just four months after the Series B funding, which added $9m to Bayut’s coffers, the Series C round’s $20m was provided by one of Bayut’s own investors, a fund that focuses on frontier and emerging markets and has more than $1bn in assets under management, the United Arab Emirates dot-com company said in a statement.

The Series C money has gone into Bayut’s parent firm, Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG), which also controls Pakistan’s Zameen.com.

Bayut seeks to “establish a firm presence across the Middle East”, the statement said. “Over the last year, Bayut has seen rapid growth in all key metrics including traffic and paying agencies, as well as expanding its team manifold to take on ambitious regional expansion goals.”

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Lamudi, an online real estate trader focusing on emerging and frontier markets, has raised 29m euros ($31.4m) in investment to grow its operations in Latin America and Asia.

The Berlin-headquartered company does business in 34 countries across the globe. These include six in Asia – the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – and three in Latin America – Mexico, Colombia and Peru. The rest of Lamudi’s geography spreads over the Middle East and Africa.

The new investment came from three sources – e-commerce startup incubator Asia Pacific Internet Group (APACIG), venture capital firm Holtzbrinck Ventures, and venture capital investor Tengelmann Ventures, a division of international multi-sector retailer Tengelmann Group, Lamudi said in a statement.

In February 2015, 16m euros was invested in Lamudi to boost the Latin American and Asian business of the company, which offers sellers, buyers, landlords and renters an online platform to find or list properties.

The residential property market in emerging markets in Latin America and Asia “is in the growth phase of the cycle”, the statement quoted Lamudi co-founder and managing director Paul Philipp Hermann as saying.

“This is confirmed by an increase in transactions, transaction prices in chosen markets and significant traffic growth on the platform. Lamudi’s financial statements are in line with predictions. Lamudi revenue grew by 460% in 2015 and it is set to grow even faster in 2016.”

APACIG chief executive Hanno Stegmann said Asia Pacific has high demand for classifieds platforms and credited Lamudi, which was launched by German Internet platform Rocket Internet in October 2013, with having “proven a strong capability to adapt to diverse markets and offer the best user experience”.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Moscow Exchange has said the turnover of financial instruments, money and precious metals on its trading floors has grown massively year on year, with sales of foreign exchange increasing by two and half times and those of derivatives nearly doubling.

Foreign currency sales through the bourse, which is Russia’s largest exchange group and a public company, reached 27.7 trillion roubles ($366bn at the January 31 exchange rate) last month compared with the January 2015 level of 14.3 trillion, the exchange said in a statement.

This included spot trades of 12.0 trillion and swap deals worth 15.7 trillion roubles respectively.

Derivatives trade swelled to 10.6 trillion from 4.1 trillion roubles year on year, the bourse said.

The rouble went down to about 75.50 from about 69.00 to the dollar between the end of January 2015 and end of January 2016.

Money-market repo transactions with the central counterparty surged in volume by a factor of 3.7 year on year.

Precious metals trade rocketed by a factor of 5.7, with 4.2 tonnes of gold sold for 11.8bn roubles and 150.4 kilograms of silver going for 5.4m roubles.

Sales of stocks, Russian depositary receipts and investment fund units were the bourse’s only market to post a decline, shrinking to 724.4bn from 685.9bn roubles. The exchange argued that one reason was there had been 18 trading days last month versus 19 in January 2016.

Six new bond issues worth a total of 102.3bn roubles were sold last month, the exchange said.

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Moscow Exchange has said it had record client activity in its derivatives and foreign exchange segments in February.

A statement from the bourse said 50,873 active client accounts were registered in the derivatives segment and 17,955 in the forex segment last month.

Open interest for gold futures stood at a record 24bn roubles on February 24 ($313.77m at that date’s exchange rate) and that for euro-rouble options totalled 17bn roubles ($226.34m) by the end of the month, the exchange said.

In the forex segment, spot instrument clients made up 64.7% of the total, a record high in the bourse’s history of forex trade, the statement said.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Trade in securities, money and precious metals on Moscow Exchange has grown significantly year-on-year with sales of derivatives more than doubling and those of precious metals nearly trebling, the bourse said.

The secondary market for stocks, Russian depositary receipts (RDRs) and investment fund units was the exchange’s only segment to have posted a year-on-year decrease in sales, the exchange said in a report on trading volumes for February.

Derivatives trade swelled by 103.1%, with securities worth a total of 13.4 trillion roubles ($176.25bn at last month’s average exchange rate) changing hands last month.

Sales of foreign exchange increased 55.6%. The February 2016 turnover stood at 30.5 trillion roubles ($401.16bn), the report said.

The bourse’s money market recorded an increase of 32.5%, with a turnover of 23.4 trillion roubles ($307.77bn) last month. Repo transactions with the central counterparty rocketed by a factor of 3.4 between February 2015 and last month.

Precious metals trade went up by a factor of 2.8 with 3.8 tonnes of gold being sold for 11.3bn roubles ($148.62m) and 328.5 kilograms of silver going for 12.6m roubles ($165,700) in February 2016.

The secondary market turnover in stocks, RDRs and investment fund units dropped by about 17.5% year-on-year.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Goldman Sachs is said to be among investors that have bought out online recruitment agency HeadHunter (hh.ru) from Mail.Ru Group, a leading Russian Internet company listed on London Stock Exchange, for 10bn roubles (about $145.5m at the current market exchange rate).

HeadHunter, which operates in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan and has more than 20m resumes in its database, was sold to a consortium ed by Russian private equity firm Elbrus Capital, East-West Digital News (EWDN), a news agency specialising in Russian digital industries, said, citing Russian business daily Vedomosti.

Goldman Sachs declined to confirm it had been part of the consortium, EWDN said.

The sale was completed in late February. Mail.Ru has already received 5.5bn roubles and is due to be paid the rest by the end of April, the agency said.

The deal had been announced in late 2014 but was delayed as Western investors were afraid to join the consortium because of Russia’s domestic economic woes and its international problems, according to EWDN.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

BCS Global Markets, a key Russian securities broker, will officially launch business in North America within a couple of weeks after a current transaction in which it is buying out Alforma Capital Markets, a US subsidiary of Russia’s Alfa-Bank, is due to be completed.

The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has just given the go-ahead to the deal, BCS Global Markets, which is a division of Russia’s BCS Financial Group and the largest securities broker on the Moscow Exchange, said in a statement.

The purchase of the New York-based broker-dealer will result in the emergence of a company to be named BCS Americas Inc., which will provide brokerage and investment services to US-based institutional investors seeking to access the Russian securities market.

Trades carried out by BCS Global Markets on the Moscow Exchange cover 25% of securities across all asset classes traded on the bourse. The Alforma buyout deal “has already received positive interest from local institutions, bearing witness to the growing appetite for Russian products in the US,” BCS Global Markets said.

“US-based institutions are the leading international investors in both emerging and Russian markets. The launch of BCS Global Markets’ operations in the US is confirmation of the Group’s ambitions to further develop investment from the region, and continue to tap into this exciting market,” said Luis Saenz, head of equity sales and trading at BCS Global Markets.

Said BCS Global Markets chief executive Roman Lokhov:

“Amidst a challenging global backdrop, we have been granted regulatory approval from FINRA. This development is testament to how, in the past three years, BCS Global Markets has become one of the leading financial institutions in Russia through strategic investment in market expertise, products and infrastructure. As a result, we are now perfectly suited to bring these operational benefits to the US market.”

BCS Global Markets has an office in London in addition to its headquarters in Moscow.

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By Andrei Skvarsky.

Moscow Exchange will buy back two subsidiaries in a planned consolidation process to be completed by the end of 2016.

The planned takeover of MICEX Stock Exchange and MB Technologies, both of which are 100-per-cent-owned by Moscow Exchange, is subject to approval by an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders scheduled for September 2, Moscow Exchange said in a statement.

MICEX Stock Exchange is the organiser of equity, bond and money trade on Moscow Exchange. MB Technologies offers technical access to derivatives trade at the bourse and provides co-location services at its data centres.

Under the consolidation plan, launched by Moscow Exchange’s supervisory board on July 21, the bourse would offer to buy back its shares in the two subsidiaries. The supervisory board set the buyback per-share price at 106 roubles ($1.65), “taking into consideration the recommendations of an independent appraiser”, the statement said.

The takeovers “will require no additional action on the part of issuers, customers or other counterparties”, it said. They “will optimise the Group’s corporate structure, streamline customer relationships with Group companies and reduce costs both for customers and for the Exchange”.

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