Horizon Capital, a specialist investor in business services and technology companies, has appointed three new hires increasing the firm’s investment and origination team to eleven.
Aidan Connelly joins as a manager with six years’ private equity investment experience at Capitalworks Investment Partners, where he focussed on the business services sector. His transaction experience includes the MBO of IQ business a technology focused management consultancy. Connelly has degrees from Stellenbosch and Johannesburg universities and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC.
New associates Giuliana Cian and Morgan Johnson extend the firm’s direct origination capability. Cian has a degree in International Management from SOAS and joins the firm from Third Bridge where she worked with mid-market private equity investors developing investment theses. Johnson joins the team from Dartmouth partners and has a degree in Business from Cardiff University.
All three newcomers will focus on executing Horizon’s proven Buy & Build growth strategy, which has seen 20 transactions completed over the past year. Recent investments include the add-ons of ITMS to converged manage services provider Timico, and United Carlton to the print and document services provider, DMC.
Horizon has completed two new platform investments so far in 2019, most recently supporting the primary buyout of software provider Juniper Education. This latest deal brings the aggregate enterprise value of Horizon’s completed transactions to £150m over the past 12 months.
Simon Hitchcock, Managing Partner, says: “Horizon has developed good momentum in our first 12 months. Following an active year of investing I am delighted to announce this significant growth within our team. Expanding the Horizon team is key to supporting the partnerships we have with our ambitious management teams, helping them as they pursue their own growth strategies. The larger team will also enable us to continue to make new investments from our strong proprietary pipeline of new opportunities. We warmly welcome Aidan, Giuliana and Morgan to Horizon.”
