Advent boosts CEE team; does two deals

Advent International, a global private equity firm, has recruited two new principals to its Central and Eastern Europe team: Dan Morgan, and Albena Vassileva.

This brings the number of new hires during 2007 to six, and increases the size of the team dedicated to the region to sixteen people.

Dan Morgan joins Advent from Kaupthing, where he was a director of the Scandinavian bank’s specialist private equity division since 2005, leading transactions such as the €465 million ($669.3 million) buyout of Refresco, a fruit juice supplier, and the £80 million ($161.4 million; €112.1 million) buyout of ADP, a payroll services business.  Before that, Morgan spent nine years as an investment director with 3i in London and Stockholm.

Albena Vassileva has joined Advent’s new Prague office. Vassileva spent seven years with ABN AMRO Capital, latterly as vice president and senior investment manager working on TMT investments. 

She was previously with ING Baring in Sofia and Amsterdam.

The hires round off a busy end to Advent's year in the region. Last week the firm bought a majority stake in KAI Group, Bulgaria’s largest manufacturer of interior and exterior floor, wall and decorative ceramic tiles.  The deal gives Advent a 70 percent stake in the company.

It also completed the acquisition of a 70 percent stake in Bucharest-listed Ceramica Iasi, one of Romania’s leading ceramic bricks and clay roof tiles producers. Including new investment, the transaction total was €35 million.