Services

50
Sector Investments
14
Investees in Portfolio
Empowering the best tech-enabled businesses

We’ve been investing in the services sector for two decades, empowering outstanding businesses on their journey through the ever-changing marketplace. We’ve made more than 50 services sector private equity investments over the last 20 years, building the expertise to enable management teams to take better and braver decisions for their businesses. We don’t tell our companies what to do, but ask the right question to make sure they are exploiting every opportunity.   

Enabled by technology

We believe that in a crowded and competitive marketplace, tech-enabled businesses will be the long-term winners. These are businesses that are committed to exploiting technology and data in order to build a much richer understanding of their customers – and therefore to build more enduring and profitable relationships with their client base. 

The best services sector businesses are harnessing their proprietary intellectual property to build customer-centric business models. They have a clear picture of what customers want and how to deliver it, driving acquisition and reducing churn. As a result, these businesses are able to grow more quickly than competitors, maintain and improve profitability as they grow, and use their technology to enable expansion into new markets, including international opportunities. 

We believe that this will continue to be a winning formula for businesses across our services sector investments. In areas such as specialist consultancy, performance marketing, software development and the provision of services to small businesses (B2SME), the sector’s leaders are putting innovative new technology at the core of their business models. 

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How we can help

 

We believe we offer a unique perspective guided by the lessons we’ve learned over more than 20 years of investing in fantastic services businessesThose lessons we’ve learned from our mistakes and our successes has taught us what expertise is most valuable to management teams looking to deliver on their growth ambitions.   

This is why we’ve designed our growth acceleration team, a world-class team with the precise expertise to equip our investees to succeed.  Whether our investee companies are looking to win more customers, expand into new markets or build scale through acquisitions, we have the resource to hand to best position our investee businesses for success.  

Our investees join a family of businesses that are using technology as a key enabler of growth.

For example the the data-led marketing firm Brainlabs has built a team of 30 developers who are constantly developing new products and services for clients with an innovative, scientific approach that is disrupting the industry. Our investee, Vendigital, provides transformation consultancy services across a range of industries. It wins in a competitive marketplace due to the technologies it has developed at its inhouse data science lab, which offers bespoke solutions to clients, streamlining the way in which they collect, analyse, and prioritise data.  

In many cases, our services sector investments are working with the growth acceleration team to pursuambitious M&A programmes. For example, we’ve supported Broadstone, the pensions and employee benefits provider, through five acquisitions in recent years, enabling it to deliver a range of new services and massively enhance its client base. And we’ve guided Catalyst Development through a merger with New York headquartered Sionic Advisers – now rebranded as Sionic – equipping the business’s leaders with new capabilities as they continue to work towards building one of the world’s best consultancies. 

 We’re convinced that the best tech-enabled businesses have a real opportunity to grow rapidly in their markets – and to move into new markets. Our experience acquired over more than 50 services sector investments can help unlock that opportunity, empowering investee companies to become best-in-class market leaders. 

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Offering Kingsbridge’s founder an alternative to a trade sale

Steve Wynne, founder of Kingsbridge, chats to us about choosing private equity investment over a trade sale and how it allowed him to retain his entrepreneurial spirit.

Case Studies

See all investments

Simply Conveyancing

Simply established itself as a conveyancing services business in 2009 and has become one of the fastest growing conveyancing companies in the UK since being founded in 2000 by Ashley and Susan King …

Sector
Services

Jensten Group

Jensten Group Ltd, previously Coversure Insurance Services Group, comprises of online wholesaler Policyfast, specialist insurance underwriters City Underwriters and franchise operation Coversure. 

Sector
Services