Private equity firms circling for Arrow Global

LISTED purchaser and manager of debt Arrow Global is drawing interest from private equity companies, including Apax Partners, according to Bloomberg in the US.

Buyout firms have been evaluating potential offers to find out if would be feasible to take the Manchester-based company – said to be worth £480m – private, according to Bloomberg’s sources.

Discussions are at an early stage but may not come to fruition because European companies tend to have high stock prices and there are regulatory hurdles.

Public-to-private transactions made up just 3% of private equity deals last year, according to data from Bain & Co.’s.

Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity and venture capital firm, headquartered in London. The company also operates out of eight other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Stockholm, Milan and Munich.

Only yesterday, Arrow Global announced it had expanded its  European footprint with addition of specialist servicing contracting in the Netherlands.

The company and CarVal Investors agreed to co-invest in a loan book with face value of about €1.7bn.

Arrow Global also agreed to purchase InVesting BV, a consumer debt buyer and collections provider with operations in the Netherlands and Belgium, for £78.5m pounds in April.

Arrow Global buys student loans and defaulted customer accounts from lenders including credit card companies, businesses and retail banks.

Arrow Global and Apax have declined to comment.