The demands of mid-market Private Equity requires a more agile, commercial approach than traditional law firms deliver.
Entrepreneurialism is at the heart of gunnercooke Private Equity and we’ve developed a range of services designed to meet the needs of investors and ambitious management teams.
Get in touch if you want to understand more about how our innovative services can help you originate opportunities, deliver successful transactions and support high performing management teams.
New Business Development – Leveraging client relationships
Advisors should always look beyond the transaction to recognise opportunities which stimulate deal flow and support long-term value creation.
gunnercooke Private Equity has the contacts, credibility and market understanding that makes us a highly effective introducer.
Our New Business Development service focuses on:
- Active introductions – Facilitating high quality, off market opportunities within the firm’s 15,000-strong diverse client base of mid-sized businesses.
- Intermediary insight – Harnessing strong C-suite relationships and a comprehensive understanding of client businesses to identify relevant and timely opportunities.
- Best fit – Pre-qualifying introductions against an investor’s focus, criteria and portfolio.
In addition to being trusted advisors, gunnercooke’s 250-strong network of Partners
share a strong business development culture and are appropriately incentivised to source new investment opportunities.
Impact Executives – Flexible strategic support
We recognise the limitations of how Non-Execs are traditionally used in Private Equity, particularly given the pace and scale of growth required.
gunnercooke Private Equity has a unique model which enables you to deploy multiple Impact Executives, introducing knowledge and expertise that is most relevant to the investment stage or business need.
Our Impact Executive service provides:
- An expanded network – Access to our group of 56 Operating Partners. This diverse pool of highly experienced management talent has experience that spans sectors, scenarios and specialisms (e.g. digital transformation, internationalisation, strategic sales and marketing, product development, turnaround, exits, IPOs).
- A flexible deployment model – You can temporarily harness consultant and Non-Executive input in line with the focus of your investment strategy, introducing ‘best fit’ expertise that aligns to specific challenges, opportunities or phases of growth.
- Appropriate incentivisation – Our cost-effective fee structure and an innovative equity vehicle enables flexible Non-Executive participation and fair distribution upon divestment.
gunnercooke Private Equity Impact Executives will extend and refresh your talent pool, helping support management teams by injecting fresh enthusiasm and valuable perspectives as and when it is needed.
Transaction Support – Accelerate time to success
The last thing you need is an inexperienced, under-resourced legal team slowing down transactions or charging high fees whilst providing sub-standard service and quality control.
gunnercooke Private Equity has the specialist skills and appreciation of the wider investment context to consistently deliver to the highest standards and against demanding timescales.
Our efficient Transaction Support services are underpinned by:
- The best talent – Your deal will be supported by a dedicated senior team with the experience and capacity to accelerate the process and identify opportunities or risk.
- Proven processes – Our relationship will be structured around a robust governance and engagement process with stage gates, milestone reviews and detailed evaluation and measurement.
- Quality assurance – We provide transparent fees and a guarantee that you don’t have to pay in the unlikely event you are not happy with the service we deliver.
gunnercooke Private Equity also provides managed access to the firms’ 250-strong team of Partners, whose multidisciplinary expertise covers all aspects of commercial law (e.g. employment, patent, intellectual, property, environment real estate, environmental, technology, restructuring international).
Our dynamic approach ensures you can draw on this specialist support within the context of the Private Equity relationship and with no need for time-intensive knowledge transfer or separate agreements.
Focused Due Diligence – Straight to the point
Whilst effective due diligence is vital in a volatile environment, too often it is a slow, onerous process, generating a high volume of information but no immediate insight on the priority needs of a business.
Ahead of full due diligence gunnercooke Private Equity can deploy a combination of professionals to quickly get under the skin of a business, using their experience and intuition to zero in on areas of risk or opportunity and produce a focused report with actionable insights.
Our Focused Due Diligence provides:
- An expert eye: Senior independent sector experts will engage with management in target businesses to identify priorities for further analysis.
- A deeper dive: Operational Partners can draw on additional ‘light touch’ analysis by our wider network of practitioners and consultants to interrogate key areas in more detail (e.g. litigation, property, IT, culture).
- Actionable insights: The process results in a highly focused 10-page report which can be used to inform strategy and the full Due Diligence process.
We will also ensure you can continue leveraging our Operational Partners and legal expertise throughout the transaction process and investment.
Vanguard Leadership Programmes
The most important task of a leader is to make the company more valuable. To become a vanguard company. The best companies in almost all cases have the best leaders. High levels of business performance come with innovation, efficiencies, profit and social good. It is possible for the acceleration of performance required by a private equity or investment house to come with strong resilient cultures and the leaving of a positive mark on the world.
Investment companies seek to maximise the value of their investment over a five plus period of ownership. It requires good and knowledgeable leadership to do this well. Added to the mix now is the demand from suppliers and customers, generation z and millennials (now accounting for 75% of the world population) to do social good. This demand is played out on social media.
Leadership is everything, and success of the business and the investment will come down to the ability of the leader. Many CEOs have grown up with the business without access to high level leadership training. CEOs with a growth or infinite mindset will provide great leadership.
gunnercooke Operating Partners have launched leadership programmes for CEO’s over the first 100 days of a private equity investment. Maintenance programmes are also run during the life of an investment if required. The programme is designed to educate and mentor the CEO for the journey ahead.
Our programmes are specifically designed with knowledge obtained from the due diligence exercise undertaken by the private equity house, including the management due diligence on the CEO and his or her team, along with discussions with the CEO and the investor. The programme could include a personal consulting session with a Harvard Business School professor, a prescribed literature review (agreed with the HBR professor), mentoring programme, and a series of specific learning sessions including a focus on ensuring that social responsibility leads to profit. In addition, our offering includes the facilitation of a virtual board with other CEOs from the investor’s portfolio that meet periodically to stimulate innovation and discover actionable solutions that accelerate professional development.
It can also be a useful addition to an investors armoury when winning an investment. CEOs are more likely to consider investors who are prepared to invest in and support their development. Costs are dependent on the programme and will be part of the transaction costs.