Blog

FF&P Private Equity, the private equity business of Fleming Family & Partners, has backed the buy-in management buyout of specialist energy efficiency business, FIT. The acquirer, Efficient Energy Management Group, majority owned by FF&P Private Equity, intends to capitalise on the demand for energy efficient commercial kitchens, as energy costs have more than doubled over the last 10 years.

PRESS RELEASE

FF&P Private Equity (‘FF&P’), the private equity business of Fleming Family & Partners, has backed the buy-in management buy-out of specialist energy efficiency business, FIT.

The acquirer, Efficient Energy Management Group, majority owned by FF&P Private Equity, intends to capitalise on the demand for energy efficient commercial kitchens, as energy costs have more than doubled over the last 10 years (source: Department of Energy and Climate Change).

Since 2001, FIT has designed and installed energy saving solutions for a large number of blue-chip customers, including major supermarket, hotel and leisure operators in the UK and Europe. FIT’s solutions offer compelling payback periods, with the savings being monitored and measurable for customers. The company’s Cheetah™ system, an energy management and safety control system for commercial food preparation, has been installed in over 2000 locations, for clients including Whitbread, Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

Commenting on the transaction, Simon Jarman, CEO of Efficient Energy Management Group, said: “We are delighted to have acquired FIT and are very excited about its prospects. It is an excellent, established business operating in a growing sector with a proven product and strong customer relationships. There is substantial opportunity to expand the customer base, diversify the product range and develop international markets. I am very much looking forward to working with FF&P to fulfil the significant growth potential that exists.”

Henry Sallitt, Co-Head of FF&P Private Equity, commented: “We are delighted to have invested in a sector with strong macro drivers for future growth. We are also investing in a management team which we believe can continue to provide a compelling energy saving product to its existing customers and to reach many new ones”.

“FF&P Private Equity has been successful in helping a range of family owned and entrepreneurial companies to grow their businesses. We look forward to working with FIT and to helping the company reach its full potential.”

FF&P was advised on the transaction by Speechly Bircham LLP, Grant Thornton UK LLP and CIL Ltd.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:
For FF&P PE: Cubitt Consulting
James Isola +44 (0)20 7367 5100

FF&P Private Equity is focused on investing in dynamic, growth companies in the UK lower-to-mid market. It invests between £3m – £15m in companies valued from £5m to £50m in a variety of situations including minority investments, management buyouts / buy-ins, development and replacement capital. Through its extensive network of contacts and working in partnership with its investors and portfolio companies, it aims to create market-leading companies that deliver superior returns to all shareholders.

FF&P Private Equity Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Food Industry Technical Limited (FIT) provides leading energy saving solutions for operators of commercial kitchens. Combining airflow measurement, data logging through remote access, energy monitoring and energy control, FIT is able to offer a number of solutions to customers which enable them to improve efficiency of their kitchen, monitor and meter their energy usage, reduce equipment failure and help them meet their environmental targets and improve profitability. The unique and patented Cheetah™ system has been installed in over 2000 locations throughout the UK and Europe. It works in all areas of commercial catering and clients include hotel groups, restaurant chains, supermarkets, department stores, government institutions and commercial organisations.

The post FF&P Private Equity Acquires FIT appeared first on peHUB.

Nokia’s investment arm is set to back Pelican Imaging, a Californian company that takes an unusual approach to smartphone cameras, according to a report from Bloomberg.

We’ve covered Pelican before. The startup has designed an “array camera” that is essentially composed of multiple smaller cameras, all organized in an array. Why do this? Because when you get to the tiny form factor required of handset cameras, the sensor is so small that you’re highly limited in terms of the number of megapixels you can squeeze out of it before image noise becomes unbearable.

Of course, if using many tiny cameras was that easy, we’d see it done in smartphones already. The secret sauce lies in the software used to bring the multiple resulting images together, and it’s that part of Pelican’s work that seems to have attracted the interest of Nokia Growth Partners.

“It’s very complicated to do this algorithmically and Pelican is one of the companies that has mastered this technology,” partner Bo Ilsoe was quoted in the piece as saying.

Imaging is central to Nokia’s current handset strategy, from its top-end Lumia Windows Phone smartphones down to its cheap Asha phones — all these devices have clever photo-taking features of one kind or another. The standout model there, so far, is the Symbian-toting 808 PureView, which uses a technique called oversampling to create a 41-megapixel image (the same technology is apparently coming to the Lumia line, too).

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

Microsoft has announced that it is rolling out a preview version of Skype for Outlook.com in the United Kingdom that will allow users to make audio and video calls directly from their inbox.

Available from today, Skype for Outlook.com requires a one-time download of a browser plugin for Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome. Once installed, users simply connect Skype to Outlook.com and merge their contacts.

You can then launch a Skype window by hovering your mouse over a contact’s picture and clicking on the audio or video call buttons that appear. There are also call buttons that show during an IM conversation.

“With Skype for Outlook.com, you can choose the right medium for your message, whether it is an email, call, video call or instant message,” Simon Longbottom, Senior Director, Product Marketing Skype said.

The service will be arriving in the United States and Germany in the coming weeks, with worldwide availability expected in the coming months.

Opera is continuing to make inroads in the connected device space: Samsung is going to start shipping Blu-ray players powered by the Opera Devices SDK soon, the company announced Monday night. Opera didn’t go into details about which of Samsung’s 2013 Blu-ray players are going to be powered by its SDK, but the company said that the devices will ship globally.

One interesting thing about this partnership is that Samsung has its own Smart TV platform, which it has been promoting aggressively to app developers. So why get a third party to power your devices? One likely answer: Samsung’s platform has been evolving from an all-purpose app platform towards a more TV-centric approach for high-end TV sets.

At CES in January, Samsung unveiled a new UI for its 2013 Smart TVs that comes with voice control, a live TV guide and a remote control with an integrated touch pad. The company is offering owners of select 2012 TVs to upgrade to the new experience for $300 with the help of its Smart TV evolution kit; but that kind of premium pricing doesn’t really work for a $130 Blu-ray player.

In light of that disparity, Samsung has to make a choice: Either fork its Smart TV platform to work on both high-end and low-end devices, or use a different solution for lower-priced devices. It looks like the company may be ready to go for the latter — and Opera seems to be the company to benefit.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of TV Can Bet on “Apps Everywhere”
• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
• OTT technologies and strategies for broadcasters

With most couples using personal lubricants and over 80% of women using sexual products, chances are that you and/or your partner(s) have encountered toxins in them. Most consumers are shocked to learn that because most sexual products are labeled as novelty items there…

When there are drought conditions, you might think that an agri-business corporation’s bottom line would suffer, but not so for chemical giant DuPont, whose quarterly profits more than doubled despite the worst dry spell in decades. According to Reuters, DuPont’s…

A media-induced panic has apparently set in across Los Angeles following the recent death of a West Hollywood lawyer due to bacterial meningitis. According to reports, both the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Los Angeles County are now busy jabbing as many local residents…

Recognizing the fact that Americans are becoming increasingly uneasy about the unlabeled presence of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) throughout the food supply, the shareholders of a major U.S.-based pharmaceutical and nutritional products company are now considering…

There are plenty of ways you can spruce up your Windows desktop, but if you’d like to inject some useful functionality into it with the help of customisable information panes and interactive widgets, then you shouldn’t look much further than Rainmeter 2.5. The open-source skinning tool isn’t for novices, but spend a bit of time with it and you’ll soon find your desktop is as functional as it’s attractive to look at.

One of Rainmeter’s weaknesses is the quality of the text displayed, particularly at smaller sizes. That’s about to be rectified however, and you can see how they’re getting on by installing the latest pre-release in the form of Rainmeter 3.0 Beta.

For the release of version 3.0, the main focus so far has been to ditch the ageing GDI+ rendering system for both text and graphics in favour of a more powerful Direct2D system used in Windows 7 and 8. So far, development has focussed on implementing improved text rendering on string-based meters, particularly where the text is smaller than normal.

Initial results look promising — we immediately noticed a vast improvement in the legibility and quality of small text on display, but there are a number of issues requiring attention, including slight differences in wrapping and relative positioning behaviour.

As a result, the feature is currently disabled by default — users must add UseD2D=1 to the [Rainmeter] section of the Rainmeter.ini configuration file to enable it. The quickest way to do this is from within Rainmeter’s own Manage section: click Edit settings to open the file in Notepad, insert the line, save your changes and then restart Rainmeter to see the effect.

The nature of the beta means other features may come and go before final release: an early 3.0 beta introduced icons for the Unload Skin and Exit options in the Rainmeter context menus, but these were removed just a week later after style issues with XP were discovered, for example.

Other minor changes implemented so far, and still present, include a new OnDismissAction command for the InputText plugin, reduced resource usage when using the OnChangeAction command and a new OnWakeAction command that takes effect when Windows resumes from sleep or hibernation. With beta updates appearing on a weekly basis, expect further refinement of these features.

Rainmeter 3.0 Beta Build 1906 is available now as a free, open-source download for Windows XP or later. Also available is the latest stable build, Rainmeter 2.5.

Avec Capital, a New York private placement firm that works with private equity and alternative assets funds, has appointed Christine Kelleher as a managing director. Kelleher joins the firm from Georgetown University Investment Office in Washington, D.C., which oversees the management of the university’s $1.1 billion endowment and where Kelleher was a senior investment officer.

PRESS RELEASE:

Avec Capital, announced today that Christine Kelleher has joined the firm as Managing Director. Ms. Kelleher will lead Avec Capital’s investment sourcing and evaluation, guiding the firm in anticipating institutional investors’ allocation priorities through different economic environments.

Ms. Kelleher brings nine years of institutional investing experience to Avec Capital. Since 2004, she was Senior Investment Officer at the Georgetown University Investment Office in Washington, DC, which oversees management of the university’s $1.1 billion endowment. Prior to Georgetown she worked with the Central European University/Open Society Institute in Budapest.

Avec Capital Senior Managing Director and Founder, Nina Lesavoy noted, “Christine’s experience developing and implementing alternative asset investment programs including her background in asset allocation, risk management and forensic style investment manager due diligence, will be valuable for Avec Capital and the investment managers with whom we partner. Her asset class expertise in global public and private equity, natural resources, real estate and hedge funds, is an enhancement to our team.”

Ms. Kelleher graduated Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude with a BA in International Relations and Russian Language from Bucknell University. She also holds Master of Arts degrees in History and Russian and East European Studies from Georgetown University. She was named by aiCIO to its “Chief Investment Officer 40 [Mostly] Under 40” list in April 2012.

In addition to Ms. Kelleher, Avec Capital’s senior team includes Nina Lesavoy, Lindsay Todd and Joseph Vet. Collectively they have deep and diverse experience in investment management, fundraising and client service. Ms. Kelleher’s first-hand experience as an institutional investor understanding and investing in complex strategies managed by a diverse pool of investment managers is a significant complement to this team and a valuable resource for the Avec principals who invest individually in the funds with whom the firm partners.

Avec Capital offers securities through XT Capital Partners, LLC MEMBER: FINRA/SIPC. www.aveccapital.com

The post Christine Kelleher Joins Avec Capital as Managing Director appeared first on peHUB.

Accel Partners plans to announce Tuesday morning that former Groupon President and COO Rob Solomon will be joining the firm as a venture partner, adding a seasoned tech executive to the firm’s ranks and marking another interesting move for a former Groupon executive. In a statement, Accel wrote that Solomon would be evaluating early stage startups for the firm, which is known for its success in investing in web companies like Facebook.

The venture firm welcomed Solomon in a statement and explained what he would add:

“As Venture Partner, Rob will be evaluating early stage and growth equity opportunities with Accel. He will also play a major role in advising the firm’s portfolio companies on a wide range of strategic and operational issues like product management, scaling infrastructure, business operations, and mergers and acquisitions.”

Accel manages over $9.6 billion in funds and has had some strong successes investing in internet companies like Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Kayak, Prezi, Rovio, Trulia, and Vox Media.

Before his tenure at Groupon which ended in July 2012, Solomon worked at the venture firm Technology Crossover Ventures and was the president and CEO of a startup called Sidestep that was acquired by Kayak.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back
• Crowdfunding’s rapid growth and future opportunity
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications

If Google really only did love Motorola for its patents, then it seems the company’s relationship with the iconic mobile phone manufacturer won’t end happily ever after. A new report from Bloomberg notes that Google’s $12.4 billion investment in Motorola looks even worse this week after a federal judge ruled that Microsoft “owes only pennies in royalties per sale of each Xbox video-gaming system and Windows operating system instead of the potential billions of dollars Google sought in a patent-infringement case.” The latest blow to Motorola’s patent portfolio value comes after Google agreed with the Federal Trade Commission late last year to not use its industry standard Motorola patents as weapons in intellectual property suits.

Continue reading…

With hectic schedules, it can be hard to keep track of everything in your news feed. That’s why we created the TalkAndroid Daily Dose. This is where we recap the day’s hottest stories so you can get yourself up to speed in quick fashion. Happy reading!!

Guides

Best Android camera apps [April 2013]

Reviews

Live Pixels [Live Wallpaper]

Accessories

Old Samsung NFC TecTile tags don’t work with the Samsung Galaxy S 4

Hardware

Sony introduces its Triluminous display technology, aims to square off direction again Super AMOLED and Retina Display technologies

Phones

HTC One gets keyed, knifed and hammered, but does it survive?

Huawei Ascend P6 shows up in Chinese certification with a 6.2mm body

LG announces the Optimus G Pro’s little brother, the Optimus GK

Samsung Galaxy S 4 now available at AT&T and Sprint

Samsung talks about why the Galaxy S 4 is your life companion [Video]

Samsung Galaxy Note III to feature 3GB of RAM and 5.99-inch display

Sony to release two flagship devices later this year, Honami and Togari

Tablets

Samsung announces the 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3

Samsung rumored to bring 4 additional tablets for 2013

 

 

 

Come comment on this article: TalkAndroid Daily Dose for April 29, 2013

Facebook Home was released only a short time ago and it hasn’t received much appreciation from users. While yes it was created for a niche market, that hasn’t stopped most people who’ve tried it from giving it a one to two star rating in the Play Store. In fact as I type this it sits at an average rating of 2.2 out of five. While it may not be a hit with the public it sure made an impression on Matias Duarte. If you’ve been living under a rock, he’s a key part of the Android design team and has been instrumental in creating the Android we see today. He praised Facebook’s software engineers by saying:

“The new Facebook Home shows an incredible amount of polish and attention to design detail, and that didn’t come from a hardware manufacturer.”

Of course that didn’t stop him from also plugging the Google design experience as well. He continued:

“With the Home experience, they did a nice job expressing the Facebook experience, but so much of the Google design experience with Ice Cream Sandwich was in there as well.”

He went on to say that he wasn’t bothered by Facebook Home replacing a lot of the vanilla Android experience and praised Android’s openness for having the ability to customize the software the way manufacturers deem necessary. Google’s great at praising quality when they see it even, if it’s from one of their competitors. While many people don’t seem impressed with Facebook’s first go at a launcher, Matias Duarte was. That may not mean much to most but it sure does say a lot about the software from a visual standpoint.

source: ABC News

Come comment on this article: Matias Duarte on Facebook Home: “Shows an incredible amount of polish”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. The Evernote team does one heck of a job at making our lives simpler. Evernote Food, again, is no different. We initially loved it for its ability to catalog the food aspect of our lives. From recipes we would love to try to restaurants that have caught our attention, Evernote Food is a good way of keeping track of those experiences. Well good got better, and simple became simpler as version 2.0 continues to make cataloging food fun and convenient. It brings:

• Explore Recipes – Thousands of recipes from the best food sites to browse, search, and save.
• My Cookbook – Recipes you save in the app, plus ones you’ve clipped or saved in Evernote, show up here, making them easy to find from any device.
• Restaurants – A location-based list and map view of restaurants that lets you clip and save the ones you want to try and see all the spots you’ve visited.
• My Meals – A photographic journey through all of your past meals and food adventures.

If food is a big part of your life, or something that you love, this app is for you. You can check out the preview video or gallery for the app after the break. We also have the Play Store link and QR Code for you to follow to download the app. Every food aficionado should have this app. Even if you’re just a lover of all things edible, this app is a must. Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Play Store Link

Come comment on this article: Evernote Food reaches version 2.0 and brings us some new features

If you’re on T-Mobile and really can’t wait for the Galaxy S 4 to arrive in stores then you’re in luck. T-Mobile has the 16GB version of the new Samsung flagship on sale for $149.99 down and $20 per month installment fees each month for the 2 year contract online right now. If you’re holding out and hoping to get the GS4 in stores you’ll be waiting until May 8th. That means, if you do the math, you’ll be dropping $629.99 for the phone overall. Of course that’s not including the plan itself.

If May 8th is too long to wait you can hit the source link below to choose between the white frost or black mist version. Either color will come with support with T-Mobile’s 4G LTE network in conjunction with the more wide-reaching 42Mbps DC-HSDPA network. While trailing AT&T and Sprint in launching the phone, they’re still way ahead of Verizon which may make a few of your friends who are on Big Red’s network a little jealous. So what are you waiting for? Go get your GS4!

 

source: T-Mobile

Come comment on this article: Galaxy S 4 For T-Mobile is Now Available Online

Microsoft’s claim that it’s sold $1 billion worth of Azure cloud infrastructure services over the past 12 months has got to be raising eyebrows, and not just across Lake Washington at Amazon Web Services headquarters.

The sales figure was made by Curt Anderson, who heads up finances for Microsoft Server & Tools business unit, in a Bloomberg report.

The gist, with my emphasis added:

“Microsoft’s $1 billion sales figure includes Azure, as well as software provided to partners to create related Windows cloud services, Anderson said in an interview. Azure customers use the services to run corporate programs, websites and applications from Microsoft’s data centers, rather than spending on their own servers, storage machines and workers to maintain them.”

Since neither Microsoft nor Amazon has responded to a request for comment, let’s examine the possibilities. That phrase “software provided to partners” probably means Microsoft is lumping in sales of on-premises software. It could also include Office 365 sales. Office 365 provides functionality that used to be relegated to shrink-wrap software via a software-as-a-service model.

An executive with a company that works with both Amazon and Microsoft said the latter is moving personnel from Office to its SaaS platform. “It’s a great thing but it’s hardly net new revenue or anything like what Amazon is doing with IaaS,” he said.

Microsoft launched its Infrastructure-as-a-Service competitor to AWS two weeks ago. Up until now Azure was pretty much a platform-as-a-service game and thus not directly competitive with AWS. That’s all changing now, which is probably why Microsoft is beating the drum about Azure momentum.

It’s not surprising that vendors play games with their sales numbers. What would be a shocker is if Microsoft — or any big cloud services provider — explicitly broke out what those sales numbers really include. That includes Amazon, which buries its cloud services sales number in a broader category that includes promotional and marketing activities. For its most recent quarter, that group logged $750 million in sales.

AWS is the uncontested leader in public cloud infrastructure — by its own and everyone else’s account. It recently claimed that its S3 storage service is home to 3 trillion objects. Last July, Azure said it stores 4 trillion objects. And, given Microsoft’s investment in Azure, you’d be foolish to rule it out.

Of course, another competitor, Google Compute Engine (GCE) looms. I’d expect Google to announce public availability of the service — introduced last June — at Google I/O next month.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Quality of the cloud: best practices for ISVs
• Amazon’s DynamoDB: rattling the cloud market
• A field guide to cloud computing: current trends, future opportunities

Facebook isn’t in any danger of experiencing a MySpace-style implosion anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean the social networking giant isn’t in danger of seeing its clout slowly erode over time. The Guardian reports that a new study from SocialBakers shows that Facebook lost around 6 million visitors in the United States in just the last month alone, which represents a 4% decline of its total user base. The most recent drop in American Facebook visitors is part of a sustained decline, since SocialBakers estimates that the social networking site has seen a drop of around 9 million visitors over the past six months. The good news for Facebook is that its own photo-sharing social network Instagram has apparently picked up the slack and has “seen surges in popularity with younger age groups.”