Pharmaceutical manufacturing company Piramal Healthcare is to acquire US-based healthcare information company Decision Resources Group from Providence Equity Partners for around US$635 million. DRG will remain headquartered in Burlington, MA. The company will continue to be led by Mr. Hoenigsberg and the existing senior management team. Barclays is acting as lead financial advisor to Decision [...]

Business Growth Fund, a fund established to help the UK’s smaller and medium sized businesses, has appointed Cate Poulson as head of BGF’s talent network, to develop the firm’s relationships with a network of experienced business leaders. BGF is an independent company with capital of up to 2.5 billion pounds ($3.9 billion), backed by five [...]

The last couple of years have seen a steady trickle of banks and insurers selling private equity assets and other non-core units as regulators globally toughen capital requirements.

In the US, the Volcker Rule, a part of the financial regulatory overhaul law that limits proprietary trading, or investments by banks using their own capital, has been forcing banks to sell part or all of their private equity portfolios.

In Europe, banks are selling their private equity assets to boost their balance sheets to prepare for the Basel III reform package which will impose capital constraints on investments. The new rules will come into force on January 1, 2013, with full implementation by 2019.

Today, we’ll take a look at some of the US and European institutions who have been offloading their private equity assets and what prices they have been getting. It also includes a couple that are on the sales block waiting to make their announcement. There are also a few among the bunch that, since being spun out, have commenced efforts–with varying degrees of success–to raise new funds. How successful these PE shops will be independently in some cases remains to be seen…

Barclays PLC’s investment banking has said it is making a private placement of 30.62 million shares, or 6.84 percent of Spain-based travel and tourism firm Amadeus IT Holding with a group of qualified investors, reports Reuters.

Barclays Private Equity wants a financing package in place before auctioning off its tax-free shopping company Global Blue, Reuters reported Thursday. The company is expected to fetch as much as 600-700 million pounds ($800 million-$1 billion), and has seen interest from several private equity firms, Reuters says. Barclays hired JP Morgan and Evercore to run the sale process.

U.S. health insurer Cigna Corp. is buying travel insurance company FirstAssist Insurance Services from the private equity wing of Barclays Plc, Reuters reported Tuesday. The deal is reportedly valued at more than $100 million.

Pricelock, which provides online fuel hedging and price protection services for businesses that rely on fuel, has raised $12 million in Series B financing. The company is backed by investors including Goldman Sachs, Artiman Ventures, Barclays, and RenaissanceRe Ventures Ltd. Pricelock is based in Redwood City, Calif.

Want to catch up on what your colleagues found most interesting on peHUB over the past five days? Here are the posts from peHUB staffers with the most pageviews from Feb. 14 to Feb 18.

1. It’s Not a Bubble, People; It’s a Pyramid Scheme – by Connie Loizos, posted on Feb. 17.

2. Sequoia Capital India in Turmoil – by Mark Boslet, posted on Feb. 14.

3. Private Equity Steers Back to Auto Industry – by Mark Boslet, posted on Feb. 14.

4. Joncarlo Mark Resigns From CalPERs – by Gregory Roth, posted on Feb. 15.

5. Here We Go Again: Obama Proposes Hiking Carried Interest Tax – by Bernard Vaughan, posted on Feb. 14.

6. Razorfish and McCann Execs on What Brands Are Generally Doing Right, and Wrong, With Social Media – by Connie Loizos, posted on Feb. 14.

7. Carlyle Taps Friedman As Its Next CFO – by Luisa Beltran, posted on Feb. 14.

8. Another Unprofitable (But Growing!) Web Company Files Its S-1: Active Network – by Connie Loizos, posted on Feb. 15.

9. Judge Delays Del Monte Sale, Chastises Barclays – by Luisa Beltran, posted on Feb. 15.

10. Poll: Is Mark Cuban Right About Internet Pyramid Scheme? – by Lawrence Aragon, posted on Feb. 17.

And the results are in!

Yesterday, we asked you whether Del Monte should go up for sale again. The poll follows a Delaware judge’s decision to delay a shareholder vote on the sale of the company to a KKR-led group. The judge was highly critical of Barclay’s handling of the sale (Barclays wasn’t named as a defendant, but it did advise Del Monte on the sale, provided debt financing for the buyers and ran the go-shop). The ruling has become the talk of Wall Street with Barclays’s rivals taking swipes at the IB, although they do the same thing and often play both sides of a deal.

So we had to ask: should Del Monte go up for sale again? As of midnight Thursday, you’re split on this. A little more than half, 55%, do think Del Monte should be reshopped. But 45% think the company shouldn’t be.

Earlier this week, the sale of Del Monte hit a bump when a Delaware judge postponed the sale for 20 days, or until March 7.

Why the delay? Vice-Chancellor J. Travis Laster of Delaware Chancery Court ruled that Del Monte board’s board failed on two counts: The board let the adviser on the deal, Barclays Capital, provide financing to the would-be PE buyers, KKR, Vestar Capital and Centerview Partners; and it let allowed KKR to team up with Vestar, which previously made the high bid in an earlier phase of the process, according to Reuters.

The judge was particularly critical of Barclays, writing in his ruling: “Barclays secretly and selfishly manipulated the sale process to engineer a transaction that would permit Barclays to obtain lucrative buy-side financing fees.”

Barclays issued a statement saying that it “strongly disagrees with characterizations that are based on an incomplete factual record.”