Arcapita Private Equity

Arcapita Bank, a Bahrain-based investment firm, announced that it has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in J. Jill, a specialty retailer of women’s apparel based in the US.

J. Jill has 225 retail stores across the United States, and leverages its presence with an e-commerce and catalog-driven direct sales business. The business had revenues of $390 million in 2010.

Arcapita is listed in the Middle East Investors Directory with the code OR07.

More details follows from their release

Bahrain-based investment firm Arcapita plans to build a fund management business to complement its private equity operations and manage $10 billion worth of funds within three years - the Reuters is reporting.

Arcapita, which had $4 billion in assets as of year end, would launch a $750 million fund focusing on Asian infrastructure. The company also launched a $500 million Gulf property fund together with the investment arm of Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank in February. Arcapita's funds portfolio would focus on real estate, infrastructure, venture capital and private equity.

Arcapita is listed in the Middle East Investors Directory with the code OR07.

The full Reuters story follows

Al Rajhi Capital, the investment banking subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank, and Arcapita Bank, an international investment firm headquartered in Bahrain, announced the launch of a $500 million Gulf real estate fund.

The two companies will seed the fund with a joint investment of $50 million. They will source and acquire investments for the fund in high-quality, income-generating real estate assets, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other countries of the GCC. The focus will be towards logistics warehouses, as well as healthcare and education related assets.

Arcapita is listed in the Middle East Investors Directory with the code OR07.

Their full press release follows

Bahrain-based investment firm Arcapita has sold its U.S. sports gear maker Yakima to Taiwan's Kemflo International according to the Reuters. It is its second private equity exit in the United States in five months.

"It has been bought by one of its suppliers, who is trying to expand vertically," an Arcapita spokesman told Reuters. The spokesman declined to provide a value for the sale of the company, which it had bought out in 2001 for about $90 million. Arcapita sold fast-food chain Church's Chicken to U.S. private equity firm Friedman Fleischer & Lowe in August 2009. It has $8 billion under management according to its 2009 annual report.

Arcapita is listed in the Middle East Investors Directory with the code OR07.