The launch of this new private equity fund, which adds to the firm's range of such offerings, focuses on small and medium-sized privately owned companies in North America, Van Lanschot Kempen said in a statement.

The Kempen North American Private Equity Fund is a closed-end investment fund with a ten-year term. It is Van Lanschot Kempen's third private equity fund after previously launching two successful funds with a focus on Europe. Like its predecessors, the fund is a hybrid investment fund that combines investments in private equity funds with co-investments. The reason for this combination is to build a well-diversified portfolio while also aiming to shorten the J-curve profile of drawdowns and returns, the firm contininued.

“From conversations with clients, we have learnt that they have a need for new alternative products within private markets. This need drives us at Van Lanschot Kempen when launching new solutions. With this North American private equity fund, we are proud to be making a new asset class more accessible to high-net-worth private investors and family offices," Erik van Houwelingen, member of the firm's management board and responsible for Investment Management Clients, said.

Sven Smeets, Managing Director Private Markets, added: “Through the Kempen North American Private Equity Fund, we are helping  clients gain access to the largest private equity market globally. The fund launch is a logical next step after the success of our previously launched European private equity funds. Investors are familiar with our investment philosophy and strategy, which we continue to pursue.

M&G Investments
M&G Investments this week announced it has invested in Harbinger Health, a US biotechnology company pioneering new technologies to fundamentally change cancer screening and detection.

Harbinger has raised $140 million in Series B funding to complete the clinical validation of its first blood-based cancer screening product and scale-up ahead of its first product launch. It aims to create a future where cancer screening is routine, affordable and accessible to everyone, and is expected to launch its first product – a laboratory developed test for the detection of early cancer – in 2025. 

Harbinger’s product development strategy is designed to enable low-cost population testing to achieve broad affordability, improve Positive Predictive Value to reduce the burden of false positives, and quantitative individual longitudinal monitoring to better guide clinical decision making if cancer is detected. Harbinger’s platform, HarbingerHx, uses machine learning, proprietary insights into the molecular biology of cancer’s origins, and growing datasets to develop insights that maximize clinical informativeness.

M&G was one of a number of investors in the company’s latest financing round. M&G’s investment was made by Catalyst, the firm’s £5 billion purpose-led flexible private assets strategy, which invests in innovative solutions to some of the world’s biggest environmental and social challenges, on behalf of the £129 billion Prudential With-Profits Fund, which includes the £53.5 billion PruFund.  

“Innovation in medical science is being led by companies such as Harbinger, whose technology has the potential to change how we screen, detect and treat cancer in the future. By providing patient capital over the long-term, we are investing in companies that are scaling-up, to bring transformational products such as this to the market which stand to benefit our societies as a whole," Niranjan Sirdeshpande, head of catalyst investment at M&G, said.