Unleashing the potential of you and your business

What are we looking for?

Our investment criteria are simple:

• Profitable, UK based businesses with £1m+ EBITDA
• Equity or debt requirement of £3m to £12m
• A plan we can support
• A team we like, trust and rate

Transaction types

Growth capital

Funding to facilitate organic or acquisitive growth. Examples include 23.5 Degrees, The Light Cinemas, Baxter's Place, Gorgeous Retail Group and Sleeperz Hotels.

Management buyouts

Financial backing for strong management teams to take control of a private company. Examples include Virgin Wines, TeamSport, Impero, ACT, ESG, JCRA, Torquay Leisure Hotel, Clamason, Tempcover, Carter Accommodation, Cargostore and Winder Power.

Equity release

Funding to allow active or passive shareholders to realise some or all of their equity value. This can be a straight release of capital e.g. MatOrtho, Virtua and Selection Services or with a more significant shareholder ‘reshuffle’ in a secondary MBO e.g. Impero and Cargostore.

These private equity and private debt transaction types are handy labels, but many investments have a combination of the above. Whatever the situation, we look to find a funding proposal that enables a solution to be found.

Working with management teams

We back you to develop and run your business, offering our support wherever we can.

We recognise that owner–managers may want to realise some element of their value to de-risk and we're comfortable with management shareholders realising a portion of the equity. As a guide, we look for the remaining stake to be of much greater potential value than that being sold, to make sure we are aligned with the key people in the business.

Once we have found a team, or the basis for a team we want to work with and who want to work with us, we do everything we can to support it to deliver the agreed goals. Key to this is open communication with the intention that we always know where we stand with each other.

The support we can provide includes very high quality non-exec's; access to your peers in our portfolio – with an active Whatsapp group; the years of experience of the wider Connection Capital team, which has pretty much seen everything before; and an infrastructure of corporate finance, banking, recruitment and other specialist firms to help sort problems, grow the company and deliver the ultimate exit.

A powerful network

Raising capital from our well-connected and experienced client base gives access to bonafide sector experts who have been there and done it and can share their commercial insight and knowledge. Imagine what you could teach yourself five or ten years from now, having changed the scale and successfully sold your business – that’s what we have access to.

Through this network we can provide introductions and advice to the businesses we back, either in a Non-Executive Director or Chairman capacity, or in a more informal manner.

We also actively encourage co-operation between our portfolio companies. For example, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, experiences were shared quickly and effectively. We believe this enabled both the Connection Capital team and our management teams to learn faster and implement best practice and innovative solutions across their businesses more quickly than others. This was vitally important in securing cash headroom, and therefore breathing space, so leadership teams could concentrate on managing their business in a critical period.

Working with advisors

We look to forge strong relationships with our advisory contacts who are a key source of investments for us.

Having invested over £520m since 2010 and without the restrictions of a traditional LP/GP fund structure, we can be flexible and creative on structuring. This could allow you to deliver a better deal to your clients, potentially one you didn’t think was available in the UK market. Our private debt product is particularly relevant here – lower return than a private equity firm would accept, but willing to tread to a gearing level where traditional debt providers would not go.

Connection Capital in conversation with...

Our YouTube channel features a series of video interviews with CEOs and Non-Execs of past and present portfolio companies. We asked them about their growth journey, why they chose Connection Capital, and what advice they'd give management teams that are considering private equity.