Small Buyout House of the Year
Connection Capital
The past year has delivered a number of records for Connection Capital, notably our highest level of capital deployed in a year, since founding, our highest level of funds returned from exit activity in any year, a newly launched business area (Co-investments) and significant expansion of the team, including a new Chief Investment Officer. During the past year we have:
Invested well over £50m, bringing our total invested funds since founding in 2010 to c£500m, a major milestone for the Company.
Returned a record level of funds to investors including our largest single £note return on an investment to date (the sale of Tempcover to RVU (see submission for small buyout exit of the year).
Hired a record number of new staff to support our growth across both the investing and fundraising/IR sides of our business, including a new Chief Investment Officer, Michael Mowlem.
Delivered 5 new deal completions and 2 follow on investments into existing investees. Notably, new deals have included the first two completions from our newly launched co-investments business:
IFF Research – MBO
Brompton Technology – Development Capital
4Wood TV & Film – MBO and subsequent follow on investment
Silverfish – Follow on investment
Thistle Initiatives Group Limited – MBO – Co-investment alongside Copper Street Capital
Modulr – Series C – Coinvestment alongside Blenheim Chalcot
Foresight
In the last 12 months, Foresight Private Equity launched two new funds in the period across the Republic of Ireland and Scotland and completed the second close for the North East of England fund. Foresight Private Equity increased team AUM to over £1.4bn and deployed £115m across 79 SMEs making it one of the most active investors in the UK market. In addition, Foresight Private Equity completed 16 exits returning c.£190m at an average of 3.4xMoM, including notable exits from Agar Scientific (undisclosed strong MoM multiple), Datapath (11.7x MoM) and Mowgli (3.6x MoM).
Foresight’s private equity team focuses on supporting UK regional SMEs and has regional offices spanning the UK. We have recently opened offices in Dublin, Leeds and Newcastle, developing local teams to build relationships within the business communities and invest in each regions. The outlook is very positive. Our investment strategy generates a sustainable impact, contributes to a resilient, decarbonised world and creates high-quality jobs that power tomorrow’s economy.
Foresight’s regional funds have created over 1,600 high-quality sustainable jobs and c. 30% of its portfolio companies are female founded.
Sovereign Capital Partners
In the face of challenging market conditions, Sovereign Capital Partners remained committed to investing in the lower mid-market, securing a successful exit and completing a number of platform deals, whilst continuing to support our existing portfolio companies with a number of bolt-on acquisitions and senior hires.
In January 2023, we sold Alveo – a leading global provider of financial data management software to financial institutions – to Symphony Technology Group (STG). We originally backed the MBO of Alveo (formerly Asset Control) in September 2018. Our support and investment accelerated the organic growth of the business and repositioned the customer proposition and revenue model. We also augmented the management team with the appointments of a non-executive Chair, a CFO and aCTO to help oversee the transformation to a cloud-based data management platform.
During the year 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023, we also made three platform investments from our£300m fifth fund, investing more than £50m of capital.
Our Buy & Build strategy saw us complete a total of six bolt-ons across three of our portfolio businesses. In addition, our dedicated Talent Partner has facilitated the appointment of nine senior leaders to our portfolio companies, including CEOs, Chairs and CFOs.