Connection Capital has tapped former Legal & General Investment Management manager Peter Knight to lead its new co-investments business.
Knight will source deals from private equity and venture managers’ portfolios, allowing Connection Capital’s private clients to directly invest in typically hard-to-access transactions.
He has spent the entirety of his career at LGIM, having joined the business as a graduate in 2011, according to his Linkedin profile. For the bulk of that time, he worked in the asset management division, where he was a fund manager in the Solutions team, managing £2.2bn of assets across its objective-driven pooled funds range.
Later, he transferred into the private assets division, covering private equity, private debt, housing and infrastructure transactions.
Clare Madden, founder and managing partner of Connection Capital, said demand for direct private equity investments has shot up as investors scour for alternatives to quoted markets in a volatile macro environment.
The specialist private client business has participated in a flurry of deals this summer, including the management buyout of 4Wood, a TV and film set design business, as well as providing £5.1m in growth capital to Brompton Technology, which specialises in high-end processing for LED video walls, and £3.9m in growth capital to Spotless Water. It also exited its position in investee company Tempcover, making over five times its initial investment.
Last summer, it snapped up a bundle of unquoted investments from Invesco, previously owned by Neil Woodford and his successor Mark Barnett, for a song.
“The professional relationships and networks we have nurtured over the years have resulted in some tremendous deals for our clients to gain exposure to,” Madden said.
“Peter Knight’s appointment to lead the strategy, increases our capacity and reflects the appetite we are seeing from private clients to further diversify their portfolios and target outsize returns with direct private equity investments.”
See also: Connection Capital appoints fund picker from Abrdn fixed income team
