Cinven sells NCP to 3i

Cinven has agreed the sale of NCP to 3i for an enterprise value of £555m. NCP was one of the early investments made by the EUR 4.4bn third Cinven fund in 2002 and Cinven’s exit sees the fund making a return of about three times its original equity investment. Including this divestment, the third Cinven fund will have returned more than EUR 2bn to investors through a combination of exits and refinancings. This sale of NCP follows the successful IPO of Foseco Plc in April 2005, an investment made in September 2001 by the second Cinven fund that generated equity returns of 3.7 times (including the fund’s retained stake in Foseco).The investment case for Cinven’s acquisition of NCP involved a radical strategic repositioning of the company from an asset based, off-street parking business to an off street and on-street parking services business that could leverage the significant opportunities arising from local and regional government outsourcing and traffic management initiatives.