Private equity company Doughty Hanson & Co announced the sale of Avanza Group to Grupo ADO, a Mexican bus operator. Avanza is an operator of bus and bus stations in Spain. No financial details were disclosed. The Avanza sale, however, is Doughty Hanson's fifth offering this year in a bid to return capital back to their investors. The private equity firm would also be raising EUR 2 billion for a new fund after it had returned capital to its investors.
The London-based private equity firm purchased Avanza in February 2007. Avanza then made several follow-on acquisitions to fuel its growth in the Spanish bus market. It acquired six firms to reinforce its growth in the urban and suburban segments. The companies were CTSA Portillo, Alosa, two concessions located in Southern Madrid and another two concessions in Northern Madrid. Doughty Hanson also provided a EUR 490 million bond issue to refinance Avanza in May.
Private equity companies like Doughty Hanson usually gather money from investors to use for acquisition of promising firms.These companies would then grow and then sell these companies after ten years and give the capital and profit back to their investment partners, Bloomberg explained.
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