Glendower emerges as BlueGem buyer

Assets in the deal include UK wine wholesaler Enotria & Coe and cosmetic surgeons chain Private Clinic Group.

Glendower Capital has backed the restructuring of a Europe-focused buyout fund, two months after Secondaries Investor reported its manager was exploring a GP-led process.

Limited partners in BlueGem Capital Partners, the debut fund managed by a GP of the same name, were given the option to cash out their stakes or roll over into a new vehicle backed by Glendower, according to a statement from BlueGem Capital Partners‘ management.

Rollover vehicle BlueGem Secondary LP has total commitments of €106 million, including additional capital for follow-on investments, the statement noted. The transaction was by led by Glendower’s Chi Cheung, Emilio Olmos and Philippe Ferneini.

Park Hill advised on the process.

Secondaries Investor reported in April that the 2006-vintage, €200 million fund, which is in carry, had around €70 million in remaining net asset value. Its remaining assets are highly exposed to the UK consumer sector and a majority of the NAV is held in two assets: UK wine wholesaler Enotria & Coe and Private Clinic Group, a UK-based chain of cosmetic surgeons.

BlueGem makes investments of between €20 million and €75 million in western European companies, according to the firm’s website. It was founded by Marco Capello, a former managing director of Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity.

In late May Glendower, which spun out of Deutsche Bank in August, announced it had led a consortium of buyers to restructure six assets managed by Atlanta-headquartered Argonne Capital Partners into a single vehicle. The firm teamed up with Strategic Partners, Hamilton Lane and GCM Grosvenor to invest around $530 million in what is understood to be the largest example of a fundless sponsors applying GP-led tools to its portfolio.

On Thursday Secondaries Investor reported that Glendower had held first close on its debut fund raised after its spinout in August. It has amassed $1.3 billion for Glendower Capital Secondary Opportunities Fund IV, against a target of $1.75 billion and hard-cap of $2.5 billion.

European funds accounted for 31 percent of GP-led deals by volume last year, compared with 43 percent from the US and 10 percent from Asia-Pacific, according to a secondary market overview published in April by advisor Campbell Lutyens.