Arma Partners, an independent corporate finance advisory firm focused exclusively on the global Communications, Media & Technology sector, has appointed Broor Spahr van der Hoek as Partner and Co-Head of its Private & Growth Capital team.
Broor will be based in Arma’s London office and will further enhance the firm’s deal origination and execution capabilities in this strategically important area. This appointment follows a period of record activity for Arma, with the firm having advised on 30 transactions valued at approximately USD12 billion in aggregate since the beginning of 2018, including raising nearly USD300 million across five transactions for fast-growing companies. These include connected car data exchange platform Wejo, cloud-native talent management and learning software company Talentsoft, tailor-made tour & travel marketplace Evaneos, public cloud data integration software provider Matillion and luxury watch marketplace Chronext.
Broor will work closely alongside Simon Carmichael and together they will jointly lead the firm’s rapidly expanding Private & Growth Capital practice, which advises private companies on capital-raising transactions in a market in which growing volumes of capital are becoming accessible to companies prior to going public or being acquired. As an increasingly diverse group of investors looks to invest capital into private companies at various stages of their growth trajectories, private financing transactions have become critical to help drive innovation, scale internationally, fund strategic ambitions and provide financial flexibility to founders and shareholders.
Prior to joining Arma, Broor held multiple roles at JP Morgan, most recently leading its private placements and growth capital business for EMEA clients, where he focused on growth funding, structured private placements and cross-border minority private equity transactions. The corporate transactions on which he has advised have raised over USD10 billion of private capital from investment firms globally for companies such as Yandex, Rocket Internet, Pension Insurance Corporation, Uber and Auto1. Broor holds an LLM and MSc in Economics from the University of Amsterdam and received his M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and London Business School through a joint degree programme.
Paul-Noël Guély, Founder and Managing Partner of Arma Partners, says: “I am pleased to welcome Broor to Arma Partners. We view the expansion of our Private & Growth Capital team as a natural and highly complementary development to our market-leading M&A practice, given the increasing importance of this type of financing to our clients. We have the ambition to deliver the expertise and connectivity to source capital globally for private companies and help them forge strategic partnerships across industries in an increasingly digital economy. This will allow Arma Partners not only to work closely with category leaders, but also to advise companies in emerging areas such as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, 3D Printing and Digital Health – often several years before the pace of M&A activity catches up.”
Simon Carmichael, Partner and Co-Head of Private & Growth Capital, adds: “I am thrilled that Broor is joining to co-head our Private & Growth Capital practice with me. He brings a wealth of experience in raising capital for large growth technology and internet companies. We have a joint mission to bring top-tier strategic advice and execution to the rapidly growing ecosystem of large private technology companies.”
