Profile

Lonsdale Capital Partners was set up in 2008 by Alan Dargan, Ross Finegan and David Gasparro. Alan and Ross had known each other professionally since 2000 and did their first deal together in April 2008.

The idea behind the firm was to take the skills learnt over many years working in larger organisations and to apply them to the smaller end of the mid-market.

The core aim is to have professionalism, experience and integrity at the heart of what we do. The team has worked on over 30 private equity deals since 1996.

Towards the end of 2015, we held the first close on our first fund at over £100m, with a number of institutional LPs backing us to invest in the same way and following the same investment criteria that has been successful for us historically. The LPs also include a number of high profile and successful business people who have invested with us in the past and have provided valuable insights and contacts across their respective industries in assisting our portfolio companies. Our investment criteria is as follows:

- Invest in profitable niche businesses in the UK and Europe

- Target businesses are typically growing, with a proven concept

- Investing in the lower end of the mid-market in companies generating between £2m and £10m of EBITDA
> LPs have an appetite and capability to co-invest and hence we can consider larger transactions
> We will always consider bolt-on acquisitions where appropriate

- Majority only investments

- Sector agnostic

We are naturally conservative in the way we finance our transactions. We only employ moderate amounts of leverage (typically 2-3x EBITDA) so as not to overburden the growing companies that we support, which are also often looking at acquisitions

We are not a typical mid-market PE house, and do not have boxes to tick. As a result we will look at things that might put off traditional PE, this includes:

- MBIs

- Majority cash outs for founders

- Poor management information