Bridgepoint has more than doubled its money with the £24.7m (€35m) sale of Walters Hexagon, a specialist distribution group for the electronic and manufacturing industries, to Anixter International, which owns a similar but larger business in the US.

The deal has helped Bridgepoint, a pan-European private equity firm, to return more than €200m to investors so far this year, a period during which many firms have found it particularly tough to release cash.