SAO PAOLO (Bloomberg) ? GP Investments Ltd., the Brazilian private equity fund founded by billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, raised 706 million reais ($328.1 million) in a stock offering in Brazil and the US to fund new takeovers.

GP Investments, based in Bermuda, sold in Brazil 20.6 million shares, more than the 20.3 million non-voting "Class A" shares it filed to sell in May, and 1.53 million stock in the US, the company said in a statement published in Valor Economico. The price per share was of 34.27 reais in Brazil.

Bermuda-registered Nordic American Tanker Shipping Ltd. yesterday announced it will buy its tenth Suezmax vessel, a 150,000 deadweight ton double-hull tanker built in a first class Far Eastern shipyard in 2003, for $80.9 million.

NAT said the purchase, which will increase the tanker company's total tonnage above 1.5 million dwt, will making it one of the largest owners of double hull Suezmax tonnage in the world.