Barclays Private Equity, the UK mid-market player, has bolstered its commitment to financial services acquisitions with the £100m (€147m) buy-out of Cabot Financial, a specialist debt purchaser.

The Cabot management team, which backed the deal, holds 20% of the business. Cabot buys discounted portfolios of non-performing consumer loans from credit card companies and aims to recover a greater amount of the debt than the price paid.