Macfarlanes has advised on fundraising for three funds that have closed in the past few weeks, for Sovereign Capital, ECI Partners and Scottish Equity Partners, respectively.

Sovereign Capital, the UK private equity Buy & Build specialist, successfully closed its fourth fund, Sovereign Capital IV, at the pre-set hard cap of £395 million.  The fund will invest up to £50 million of equity in services based companies, with the same investment strategy that has been deployed consistently across all of the Sovereign funds.  The Macfarlanes team was led by partners Alex Amos, Christopher Good and James McCredie.

ECI Partners announced the final closing for its tenth buyout fund, ECI 10, at the hard cap of £500m. ECI launched its latest fundraising in early April 2014 with a target fund size of £400m and closed at the hard cap five months later. The fund was raised predominantly from its existing institutional investors as well as five new investors to this partnership. The Macfarlanes team was led by investment management group partner Stephen Robinson.  Partner Mark Baldwin provided tax advice.

The third fund is the Environment Capital Fund for Scottish Equity Partners.  This closed at £135m and has been established to invest in UK-based, clean energy infrastructure projects.  The fund has been backed by SSE plc, the FTSE 100 energy company, as well as a syndicate of financial investors led by Lexington Partners, the world’s largest independent manager of secondary private equity and co-investment funds. The Macfarlanes team was led by Stephen Robinson.

Bridget Barker, head of the investment management group at Macfarlanes comments: “These three substantial fund closings over the last few weeks are testament to the current strength and depth of our private funds practice and the fundraising market in general.  We were delighted to be involved in such important transactions.”