Change to nominated adviser and broker and shareholder update
01 August 2008
ACP Capital Limited (the "Company": APL.LN) announces the appointment of Collins Stewart Europe Limited as Nominated Adviser and sole Broker to the Company with immediate effect.
The Company was informed on 25 July 2008 that Derek Vago, Eric Youngblood and Nikolaj Larsen (the "Former Executives") had terminated their employment with a subsidiary of the Company with immediate effect and therefore had ceased to be partners of ACP Capital (UK) LLP.
The Former Executives have also indicated that they will not voluntarily resign from their positions as directors of various group companies, including ACP Mezzanine Limited. Therefore the Company has been forced to initiate steps to remove the Former Executives as directors from certain group companies. As part of that process, the Company has today served notice on ACP Mezzanine requisitioning an extraordinary general meeting of that company. The Company will update shareholders on the progress of that requisition as soon as practicable.
The Company also announces that it has no current intention to enter into any material transactions whilst it completes its internal review process. As such, it is likely that current market expectations are based on an investment process which may no longer be followed by the Company. In particular, the Company has not entered into the proposed management agreement with GCI Management AG ("GCI") which was announced on 20 June 2008. The management agreement was subject to GCI obtaining the relevant supervisory board consents, which have not been received.
Enquiries:
- Chris Wells, Collins Stewart +44 (0) 207 523 8350 (Nominated Adviser)
About ACP Capital
ACP Capital is a Jersey-incorporated specialist integrated finance and asset management company, quoted on AIM and focused on providing equity and debt products to European small and medium sized enterprises (the “SMEs”).
ACP Capital aims to benefit from opportunities generated from the strong growth in SME demand for integrated finance, combined with the reduced appetite for SME lending among traditional banks owing to higher regulatory capital requirements.
In order to better serve the SME markets directly, ACP Capital is establishing localised operating platforms (the "Platforms") in its key markets of Germany, France and the United Kingdom. These include to-date Leasecom, a leading SME finance provider in France, and GCI, a specialist private equity firm for the German SME market. Further Platforms are being evaluated currently to serve the remaining key markets.