American Capital said Friday that its sponsor finance group invested over $59 million in three companies during first quarter. In March, American Capital invested in a second lien facility to support the refinancing of Total Safety, which is owned by another PE firm. Also that month, American Capital invested in a second lien facility to support the buy of Datapipe by another PE firm. In February, American Capital invested in a new first lien facility as part of the refinancing of its portfolio company, Neways.

American Capital said Monday that it closed on the sale of a $414 million of collateralized loan obligation bonds. Deutsche Bank arranged the transaction. American Capital Leveraged Finance Management, a subsidiary of American Capital Asset Management, is externally managing the CLO.

American Capital, and its affiliated funds, have received $129 million in debt and equity proceeds, subject to post-closing adjustments, from the sale of portfolio company Paradigm Precision Holdings. Dynamic Precision Group, which is backed by the Carlyle Group, acquired Paradigm Precision on Jan. 31. American Capital said it received $127 million. American Capital invested in Paradigm Precision in 2007.

American Capital‘s portfolio company Pan Am International Flight Academy has acquired Airline Career Academy. Airline Career Academy is a pilot training academy specializing in JAA/EASA and FAA ab initio training.

American Capital said Wednesday that it is expanding its investment activities into the energy infrastructure sector. The firm has formed American Capital Infrastructure which will be led by Paul Hanrahan. Hanrahan, who will be CEO of American Capital Infrastructure, is the prior President and CEO of The AES Corp. Rich Santoroski, also of AES, joins American Capital Infrastructure as an MD, while Rajeev Garside be a VP.

American Capital said Wednesday that it completed the refinancing of all its recourse debt with a new four-year $600 million institutional term loan. In addition to repaying the recourse debt, proceeds will be used for working capital and general corporate. Also, American Capital said it has obtained a new four-year $250 milion senior secured revolving [...]

Michael Michienzi has joined the Riverside Company as a senior operating partner. He will be part of the Dallas office. Michienzi was most recently an American Capital senior principal.

During President Obama’s first term, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Investment Company program has committed more capital to investors backing growth plays at the current—and dirt cheap—interest rate of about three percent.

It’s because investors are increasingly seeking out SBIC funding to support mezzanine deals, growth plays and smaller buyouts. The SBIC program lent $1.2 billion last fiscal year (each ends Sept. 30) and will surely approve funds exceeding that amount this year, but it still has hundreds of millions of dollars that go unused thanks to too few applicants and too few approvals. Yet, the capital committed by the program over the past full fiscal year represents an increase over the four prior years’ commitment levels by a whopping 55 percent. Experts believe the gap in capital allotted to the program and the amount it actually deploys will continue to shrink; difficulty raising debt has turned more investment firms that would usually sneer at the prospect of partnering with the government instead into eager recipients of discount debt.

Some PE pros will have a little something extra under the tree this year, according to a survey of private equity professionals. “Bonuses are back, and they are back in a big way, said David Kochanek, publisher of the “2011 Private Equity Compensation Report,” a comprehensive survey of private equity firms that included Kayne Anderson [...]

Mirion Technologies, which is backed by American Capital, is up for sale. San Ramon, Calif.-based Mirion had been in the market for a $230 million loan to refinance its debt. Yesterday, Mirion shelved the refinancing in favor of a sale, according to my compadres at Thomson Reuters Loan Pricing Corp. News of Mirion’s sale comes [...]