UK – Specialist private equity investment company, Charterhouse Development Capital (CDC), is to launch its latest pan-European buy-out equity fund later this month.

The new fund will be CDC’s seventh and it aims to attract €3bn that will be invested in European companies. The first closing for the fund is anticipated in the second quarter of this year. “We will be looking to get new investors on board, as well as our existing client-base which is diverse and contains a strong institutional element,” says Duncan Aldred, a CDC director.

Aldred says they are following the same launch strategy for the new fund as for the previous six funds, the success of which means that CDC now holds assets worth in excess of €18bn across Europe. “We only ever set up one fund at a time,” he says. “Basically, when we think that the previous fund is nearing maturity, and in the case of the sixth fund we have raised over 70% of its £1.2bn (€1.9bn) target, we get ready to launch another.”

CDC’s funds are buy-out equity funds, meaning they buy companies with the raised capital and then sell them off at a profit. “We are a traditional private equity buy-out fund company, and I don’t foresee any change to that strategy, as it has been working pretty successfully for 70 odd years now,” says Aldred.

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