PRIVATE EQUITY FIRM OF THE YEAR


Sponsored by:


Winner:


LDC


The Thames Valley Deals Awards proceedings always begin by ‘satisfying the inner man’ (and, of course, woman) with the starter course served prior to the award-giving ceremonies.


So it fell to guest presenter Tony Hawks to draw diners away from their conversations, in order to concentrate on the ‘starter’ for the evening’s awards programme.


There were six shortlisted finalists for the first award category, PE Firm of the Year: the Business Growth Fund, LDC, Connection Capital, Percipient Capital, NVM Private Equity and Sovereign Capital.


BGF offers long-term growth capital and in 2014 supported Slough- based Furniture Village, Farnborough-based Skyscape Cloud Services, and Maidenhead-based Abbey Pharma (which trades as Intrapharm). BGF has now opened a Reading office to support its Thames Valley investments and to promote further investment across the region through its growing team of investors.


LDC’s Thames Valley office – last year’s winner of this award – had another very active year, including backing the management buyout (MBO) of Connect Communications and the MBO of Clifford Thames Group. Investment activity has generated more than £180 million of capital gains in recent years.


With £170m under management, Connection Capital has a portfolio of self-selected direct investments in private equity, commercial property and alternative asset funds. In 2014, it supported The Light on the acquisition of Cambridge Cineworld, with £5.2m of growth capital.


Percipient, which backed the Bicester-based bathroom distributor Cooper Callas in its MBI deal, alongside Leumi ABL and Santander, also recently invested in Oxfordshire company DFx Technology.


Nominated for the third year running, Reading-based NVM Private THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2015


Equity, invested in six new businesses around the UK In 2014. This included the MBO to form Agilitas IT Solutions from Acal Enterprise Solutions. The team also achieved a number of strong exits which included local ERP Software Specialist Kerridge Commercial Systems. NVM’s Reading office continues to build the portfolio, seeking investment opportunities in the £2m-£10m bracket.


UK private equity buy-and-build specialist Sovereign backed Alcumus, based in Aylesbury, on the acquisition of Safety Management & Monitoring Services (SM&MS). Sovereign is a highly active investor in business support services, healthcare services and education and trading and has completed 240 transactions since 2001.


Andrew Thomson, founding partner of Henley-based independent practice HMT LLP, was invited to the stage to announce the category winner on behalf of the sponsors.


Thomson revealed that LDC had retained its ‘PE Firm of the Year’ title.


After collecting the award trophy with his LDC colleagues, Yann Souillard, MD of the Reading office commented: “This is fantastic. I know we have a very good team, but it’s nice to be recognised for our hard work and skill. It is a definite boost for the team, but it’s also down to the deals community, the advisers, lawyers and banks etcetera that help us. So, it’s great to be here tonight with a whole bunch of people who all work together – our success depends upon their trust basically. We just aim to keep doing deals with them.”


Commenting on the current deals scene, he added: “Generally speaking companies are more positive, looking to do things, which is healthy for the region and adviser community. We are very optimistic for the future, but such conditions don’t necessarily make it any easier to do the deals.”


www.businessmag.co.uk


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60