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Advent International funds buy-out of Danish furniture retailer ILVA

Private equity firm Advent International has funded the buy-out of Denmark's second largest furniture retailer, ILVA, having teamed up with UK retail expert Martin Toogood.

Advent is reported to have invested around E90m in the transaction.

Toogood will become executive chairman of the company. He said that ILVA was more focused on customer service than some other Scandinavian furniture companies. ‘I am delighted to be leading the company in its expansion beyond its home market,' he added. ‘We are already looking for out-of-town sites in Sweden and the UK.'

Fred Wakeman, director at Advent International, was also delighted. ‘ILVA is well positioned to build a major pan-European business: its broad product range is easily adaptable to preferences in local markets, it has attractive and flexible store formats, easily edited and adaptable catalogues, a supplier base that can support expansion and delivery to several countries, and good IT systems,' he said.

Advent has underlined its commitment to the European market recently with the promotion of investment professionals within its French and German teams. The firm focuses on the retail sector and has enabled various smaller chains to expand in recent years.

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