Graphite Capital, a UK mid-market private equity specialist, has made several promotions and new appointments which reinforce the strength of its investment and value creation teams.
James Markham, Omar Kayat and Humphrey Baker have been promoted to senior partner, John Western has become a partner and Zoe Jackson has been made an investment manager. Graphite has also recruited three investment executives: Edgar Borg Rodriguez, Tom Llewellyn and Alex Hearne.
Drawing on his broad value creation experience across the Graphite portfolio, Markham was key in Graphite’s recent successful sale of U-POL, the manufacturer and distributor of automotive repair and refinishing products. Kayat led Graphite’s recent acquisition of Wonderbly, the world’s leading publishing platform for personalised children’s books, while Baker headed up the investment in Babble Cloud, the unified communications, cloud contact centre and cyber security provider.
Jackson’s recent transactional work at Graphite includes Higher Ed International, a global online programme manager for universities, and John worked on the purchase of Ten10, a leading UK software quality assurance and testing provider.
Borg Rodriguez brings two years’ experience with Rothschild & Co working on transactions in the TMT sector for private equity and corporate clients. Previously he worked as part of the corporate finance team at PwC. A chartered accountant, Edgar has an economics and computer science degree from the University of Birmingham.
Llewellyn, also a qualified accountant, has joined Graphite after five years at PwC working on mid-market deals in the transaction services team, most recently as a manager. He has a degree in mechanical engineering from Bristol University.
Hearne worked on M&A, debt and equity transactions in a variety of sectors in the investment banking team at Citigroup before joining Graphite. He has a mechanical engineering degree from Cambridge University.
Markus Golser, Graphite managing partner, says: “We are delighted to recognise the strong contributions that Humphrey, Omar, James, John and Zoe are making to our business. We are also very pleased to bring Edgar, Tom and Alex on board to continue strengthening and expanding our investment capability.”
