London, November 2010
FORESIGHT GROUP EXPANDS PRIVATE EQUITY TEAM
Foresight Group (“Foresight”), a leading alternative asset manager, has bolstered its Private Equity team with two new appointments, Matt Smith and Darrel Connell, who both join as investment managers.
Based in Foresight’s Sevenoaks office, Matt and Darrel will use their experience to manage investments across a broad spectrum of growth businesses, working alongside management teams to enhance, protect and add value to those businesses whilst generating income and delivering returns to investors.
Matt joins Foresight from Rothschild where he spent 6 years working as a corporate finance adviser in both equity capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. He has extensive experience of origination and execution on a range of transaction types and in variety of sectors. Matt graduated from Oxford University in Biological Sciences and Physiology. During his time there, he rowed in the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race four times.
Darrel joins Foresight from Grant Thornton where he established and led the High Growth Corporate Finance team tasked with advising promising UK businesses on their financing strategies. Previously, Darrel was part of the start-up team of the high profile internet television business Joost and, prior to this he advised leading FTSE and private equity companies on their investor relations and stakeholder communication strategies at two financial PR practices, Financial Dynamics and Euro RSCG Biss Lancaster.
Bernard Fairman, Chairman of Foresight, commented: “Foresight Private Equity typically invests between £1 million to £5 million in MBOs, buy-ins and growth capital for UK companies. We take a flexible approach to creating the right structure for each opportunity and this means having a team with a broad range of experience to draw upon. Both Matt’s and Darrel’s previous expertise complements the rest of the team perfectly and I have no doubt that both our investees and investors will soon benefit from their knowledge and expertise.”
The strength and depth of Foresight’s Private Equity team has enabled Foresight to win management mandates of established VCTs, such as Advent VCT, Advent 2 VCT, Noble VCT and Keydata Income 1 and 2 VCTs from other investment managers.
For further information, please contact:
Emma Cantrill: emma@intelligentprofile.com / 01892 769958 / 07788 757377
Louise Barnett: louise@intelligentprofile.com / 01892 769952 / 07713 742685
Notes to editors: Foresight is an independent alternative asset manager, which focuses primarily on investments in unquoted UK and European companies or projects and offers investors exclusive access to attractive income and growth opportunities. Foresight manages approximately £225 million across a number of funds, including Limited Partnerships, Enterprise Investment Schemes (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs).
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