Doughty Hanson has agreed to take a 70% stake in Zobele, a domestic air freshener and insecticide products maker based in Italy, in the first significant deal in the country for six years.

The stake has an equity cost of €100m ($127.5m) from Doughty Hanson Fund IV, which raised €1.6bn in early 2005 and is nearly three-quarters invested. As a result, Doughty Hanson is about to start marketing its fifth fund, a source said, although the firm declined to comment.