Partner with management teams
We are active and involved owners of businesses, whose role it is to support the strategy and ambitions of exceptional management teams. We recognise that their passion, enthusiasm, commitment and energy are the primary components of long-term value creation in the companies that they and we are jointly responsible for. We seek to partner with management teams who can drive strategic initiatives, create growth opportunities, manage risk and who are disciplined capital allocators.

Focus on value
We believe that we are better able to support the companies that we invest in if the price that we pay is fair and if they are not burdened with excessive leverage or unrealistic expectations. We view the margin of safety created by a reasonable entry price as a key way to mitigate risk and create superior long-term returns.

Seek long-term compounding potential around secular industry themes
We prefer to compound our capital in companies and with management teams that we know well and that have a proven track record of success, rather than to exit too early. Accordingly, we seek companies that benefit from  secular themes that support capital growth, and aim to stay invested in them over the long-term. Since it is impossible to get everything right in our forecasts and investment theses, we try to ensure that our investments are enhanced by the passage of time and relevant trends in their industry.

Create flexible and bespoke private equity solutions
We focus on transaction situations that have the potential to lead to fair entry prices. We try to avoid investment opportunities where our capital is priced as a commodity and where we cannot create the right balance of upside, governance, risk and returns. This naturally leads us to complex situations which require bespoke solutions. We are always willing to explore non-standard ownership, governance or balance sheet structures that correspond to the unique strategic and financial objectives of the companies, owners and stakeholders that we try to partner with.

Put our own capital at risk to align our and our partners’ interests
We are investors at heart, not asset managers. As such, we commit a significant amount of our own capital in every company that we decide to support. We believe that alignment of interest ensures that we analyse risk in a more disciplined manner, assess both upside and downside more thoroughly, and ultimately perform better as capital allocators.

Manage risk actively
We consider that risk management is an absolutely essential aspect of our investment process and portfolio management. Our focus on fair entry price, reasonable leverage and structured downside protection are aspects of our risk management culture. Similarly, our preference to stay invested over the long-term in successful companies we know well, and to support them with growing capital commitments, ensures that we minimise the level of risk by unit of capital invested.  We take an active and opportunistic approach to reducing our capital at risk as we learn more about the value growth opportunities of the companies we support.