From:
Date: February 3, 2013
Subject: Entrepreneurship Club and Deloitte Institute of Innovation Search Fund Event
Dear First_Name,
Do you want to be an equity owning manager or generate an IRR > 30% ? Then search funds could be for you! Hear more about it at our Search Fund event with Deloitte Institute of Innovation on Wednesday February 13 at 6pm.
A Search Fund is a method for an entrepreneur, or a team of entrepreneurs, to become equity owning manager/s. Capital is raised in two stages. In the first stage, a small pool of capital – the Search fund – is raised from a group of 10 to 15 investors to financially support the efforts of the Principal to identify a privately held company for acquisition.
In the second stage a larger amount of capital is raised to form the equity component of the management buy-in. Post-acquisition the entrepreneur becomes the CEO of the business and is tasked with growing the business. The third stage is a sales of the business for the benefit of investor and the entrepreneur.
The search fund model is well established route in the USA consistently delivering IRR portfolio returns in excess of 30%. The model is still relatively unknown in the UK. The following panel has been drawn together to answer tell you more about search funds and answer any questions you may have.
Simon Webster is a search fund entrepreneur. He learned about the search fund model while studying at London Business School. He raised a fund and acquired a company in 1995. He grew the business from £3.5m to £30m and EBITDA from £0.4m to £2.4m over a 10 year period. He successfully sold the business realising an excellent return for investors in December 2005 and exited in 2007. Simon is now an investor. He is a founding partner of Ivy Partners, chairman of R Healthcare Ltd, director of MTIS Ltd, and a non-exec of Servebase Ltd. He is advising current MBA graduates who are raising search funds and is chairman of the European Search Fund Association.
Will Thorndike is a serial search fund investor, having invested in more than 50 search funds. He is the Managing General Partner of Housatonic Partners, a private equity investment firm with over $1bn in assets under management. Prior to Housatonic Partners Will worked with the Walker Publishing Company and T. Rowe Price Associates. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Ritz Steytler is a search fund entrepreneur. Following a successful career at Accenture and IBM, Ritz undertook an Executive MBA at London Business School. He raised a search fund and acquired Servebase in May 2011. Servebase has a turnover of c. £4m and provides “Plug & Play” payment technology for merchants who need to process card transactions through any sales channel across many territories. Ritz is the CEO of the business.
|
