ProVen Private Equity sells majority stake to GMA Capital

28 January 2002

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ProVen Private Equity has announced that GMA Capital, the Michigan-based investment banking firm, has taken a majority shareholding in the business. The deal, which has a value in excess of $15m, is the result of a long flirtation, which began eight years ago when Gordon Power, chief executive of ProVen, was looking for help fundraising in the US and was introduced to Charles Rothstein, managing director at GMA. The merged entity is to be re-named Beringea after a historic land bridge which was once a gateway to explorers, uniting the old and new worlds, and will have combined funds under management of $225m. Existing ProVen funds will not be affected by the merger; in fact the â€˜Global Rightsâ€™ series will continue, with the launch of Global Rights Fund III already in the planning stage. Gordon Power will remain with Beringea as executive chairman and it will be managed in a similar way to ProVen; three managing directors â€“ two in the US and one in the UK â€“ will report to a board of Beringeaâ€™s investors. In total there are eight primary investors behind Beringea, all with relatively equal stakes in the new company. Beringea will be headquartered in the US and structured as an LLC for tax reasons, but Power stresses that this is not a move away from European investment.

ProVen was formed in 1998 following a management buyout led by Gordon Power, chief executive of ProVen, of Guinness Mahon Development Capital (9 February 1998, page 4). It specialises in investment in Intellectual Property Rights. GMA was formed in 1988 and provides a range of transactional services (specialising in mergers, acquisitions and corporate finance), as well as participating in the private equity market: serving as the manager of InvestCare Partners, a specialist fund for investment in the healthcare sector. Power justifies the merging of healthcare and IPR interests by saying that â€“ in the US especially â€“ healthcare has become increasingly about recognisable brands, and brand management has always been the central tenet behind the Global Rights funds.