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Legal & General Ventures ("LGV"), a leading private equity firm, has achieved five disposals over the past three months. Despite volatile market conditions, all five exits have been completed at good values on or ahead of schedule. The most recent realisation, announced today, was Earl's Court & Olympia, the London exhibition venues. The business was sold for £245m.

Three of LGV's disposals, which were achieved in the space of a month from the end of January 2004, are from its LGV 1 Fund, which was invested during 2000 and 2001. They are: Bourne Leisure, the UK's largest caravan parks operator, MGE-UPS, a French provider of uninterruptible power supply solutions and Accantia, a UK based manufacturer of personal care products including Lil-lets tampons and Simple skincare products.

At the end of March, LGV completed its fourth realisation with the sale of The Unique Pub Company ("Unique"), one of the UK's leading pub leasing companies. The exit from Unique represents the second time that LGV has teamed up with Enterprise Inns plc ("Enterprise"): it originally backed the young company in 1991, exiting through an IPO in 1995. Seven years later it formed a joint venture with Enterprise to acquire Unique. At that time Enterprise was granted an option to acquire LGV's stake for a fixed price, which it exercised on 31 March 2004, enabling Enterprise to join the FTSE 100.

A common thread connecting four of the transactions - Bourne Leisure, MGE-UPS, Unique and Earl's Court & Olympia - is that LGV had invested alongside trade partners and, with the exception of the latter, the exits were achieved through a sale of LGV's equity to its trade partners. Investing alongside trade partners has become a significant source of activity for LGV and now represents three quarters of the deals it leads.

Commenting on the exits, Michael O'Donnell, Director said: "We have long recognised the need to adopt a flexible approach to deal structuring, and these exits reflect the success of this strategy."