Riverside Company, the US mid-market buy-out firm, has made a first closing on its new Central European fund, which has a target of $200m (€200m).

The move will allow the firm to complete a handful of deals in its target region of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, according to Antonio Cabral, a managing partner. He declines to reveal the amount of the first closing but indicates it is a small amount of the overall target. He says: "The deals came a little sooner than we expected." But he says completing deals quickly is one of the firm's hallmarks.