When Souter Investments was launched over 13 years ago, their vision was to create a professional but entrepreneurial family investment office.

The overriding purpose of the office was to build a diversified investment portfolio that would generate healthy returns over the long-term, be resilient to economic downturns and fund charitable donations. Although they deploy capital across multiple asset classes, their primary focus is on unquoted private equity investments.

Souter’s investment activity reflects a broad, sector agnostic approach. They have made investments across a number of sectors such as industrials, financial services, business services, transport, healthcare, oil and gas services, consumer products, telecoms and technology. They do not invest in companies involved in alcohol, gambling, tobacco, armaments or payday type loans.

As a first-generation entrepreneur led family investment office, they have not raised funds from third parties and only invest on their own account. This means that they are not constrained by fund rules, specific investment hold periods or prescriptive investment criteria; they can therefore invest in whatever form and for whatever period makes sense.

Souter typically deploy equity cheques between £2 million and £30 million and can:

• invest in a variety of transaction types, including buy-outs, buy-ins, growth capital, cash out, buy and build, turnarounds, disposal of non-core assets and balance sheet recapitalisations;
• use a variety of investment structures;
• take majority or minority positions;
• provide management expertise and resource as appropriate, either directly or via their extensive network; and,
• be flexible in their hold period.

Most of Souter’s investments are buy-outs or acquisitions of established corporations, but they also back earlier stage growth businesses. Some of the companies in their portfolio are very recognisable, others are less well known to the general public despite being market leaders in their chosen fields. They do not generally invest in start-ups or pre-revenue companies but do support a small number of selected angel syndicates and VCs.

Souter’s investee companies are typically UK-based or headquartered, but they have made investments as far afield as New Zealand, Turkey, South America, Finland and Poland. Investee companies often have an international footprint.

Souter’s approach is to employ high standards of professional diligence and rigour in selecting, executing and managing their investments, but they also benefit from an entrepreneurial owner, with a strong commercial and operational background, who has founded, acquired and operated businesses across many international jurisdictions. They like to lead deals but are equally comfortable working with co-investment partners; they have led around half of the deals completed.

For more information see www.souterinvestments.com