The Mill sold to Barclays

The deal, which closed yesterday, will see the senior management team of chief executive Robin Shenfield and co-founder and chief creative officer Pat Joseph remain with company and continue to have a “substantial” stake in the business.

The Mill said that Barclays Private Equity’s funding will be used to support growth in Los Angeles, where it is moving to larger premises in July, together with further expansion into emerging markets including Asia and South America.

Shenfield said: “The rapidly growing demand for creative moving image content across all platforms has been a huge driver for us over the last few years, allowing us to broaden our services into providing video content for the web, mobile and for video games.

“With the support of Barclays Private Equity we will be able to continue our expansion into these high growth areas and expand geographically into exciting new territories such as China, India and Brazil.”

It first emerged that The Carlyle Group, which invested in The Mill four years ago, was likely to sell the VFX and post business when mergers and acquisitions specialist Harris Williams was tasked with reviewing the business.