Kester Capital, a primary buyout specialist, has made two further additions to its investment team – Thomas Holroyd joins as Principal and Rob Henderson as Vice President.
Holroyd brings a wealth of prior investment experience having spent seven years working in private equity for Vitruvian Partners and Chiltern Capital as well as a number of years at mid-market advisory firm, Arrowpoint Advisory (previously Livingstone Partners). Holtoyd began his career at PwC, where he qualified as an accountant.
Henderson has spent the last six years in private equity and venture capital with Albion Capital and Root Capital. Prior to that, he spent four years at KPMG, working in the corporate finance and restructuring teams, where he also qualified as an accountant.
These hires come on the back of a significant level of deal activity for Kester in 2021. Kester recently announced the sale of Frontier Medical Group’s Skin and Wound Care business to Agilitas, having sold the Infection Prevention division to HIG-backed Vernacare in 2020. In aggregate, the investment in Frontier generated a 3.4x return for Kester Capital. In addition, in the last four weeks Kester announced two portfolio acquisitions: medtech CRO, Avania, acquired US competitor Imarc, accelerating its global expansion and bringing the total number of strategic acquisitions under Kester’s ownership to four; and, You Garden, an online horticulture business, announced the acquisition of Gardening Direct. Earlier this year, Kester completed a new investment in Optibrium, a drug discovery software provider to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
Adam Maidment, Managing Partner of Kester Capital, says: “We are delighted to welcome Thomas and Rob to the team. This is a busy time for Kester as we look to deploy our current fund and develop the portfolio. Both Thomas and Rob bring with them valuable investment experience and will be key members of the team.”
