Inverleith, a Scottish headquartered private equity firm, has held the final close of its first institutional fund Inverleith Limited Partnership, at its hard cap of EUR60 million.
Inverleith was founded by former Chairman and Chief Executive of Noble Group, Ben Thomson and former President and Managing Director of The Glenmorangie Company and Partner and Head of UK for L Capital, Paul Skipworth. Inverleith focusses on investing in businesses operating in the high growth consumer-brand sectors of wellbeing, lifestyle and heritage.
The fund targets strategic minority or majority stakes in companies headquartered in the UK (and opportunistically in Northern Europe), with enterprise values of up to EUR30 million. Its strategy seeks to employ the Inverleith team’s operational insights and capabilities to internationally scale the brands, based on the products’ unique selling points and a strong, defendable market position.
The fund is already actively deploying capital and has completed two investments to date: Scotch Malt Whisky Society – the world’s foremost subscription single cask malt whisky society; and Good Hemp – a leading producer of hemp milk, a fast-growing alternative to dairy milk.
A further, third transaction is expected to complete imminently, indicative of the strong pipeline of opportunities within Inverleith’s target market.
Paul Skipworth, Managing Partner says: “With Inverleith Limited Partnership we look forward to helping to build market-leading brands through our hybrid of hands-on operational expertise, investment experience and deep consumer focus. A number of macro trends are creating an attractive and sustainable investment environment within our target sector. We believe Inverleith’s differentiated skills will allow us to continue to capitalise on these trends to deliver attractive returns to our investors.”
Ben Thomson, Inverleith Chairman & Partner, adds: “Whilst many asset classes seem to be pretty fully valued at present, we believe there is a real opportunity to invest in smaller, disruptive consumer brand companies that have great products in fast growing markets. By bringing managers from our networks, we can professionalise the team, particularly in marketing and sales, to build companies to a size where they become attractive acquisitions for trade players or mid cap private equity buyers.”
Aerius Associates acted as placement adviser and Dickson Minto provided legal advice.
