Arete Capital Partners, the North-West based investment firm, is pleased to announce today the successful sale of its significant stake in Leonard Curtis Group ('LC'), the Manchester headquartered Restructuring and Insolvency firm, to specialist financial services investor Pollen Street Capital ('Pollen Street') in a landmark deal for the region.The transaction, which sees Pollen Street acquire a majority stake, marks a major exit for Arete since its investment in LC in August 2021 and delivers a 3.2x gross return for its investors.

Arete Capital Partners, alongside fellow investor Svella Plc, backed LC emerging from the Coronavirus panedmic to support an ambitous management team with a clear growth strategy that would see them scale the business and enter new service lines.

LC provides restructuring, legal, funding and business services to SMEs and corporates throughout the UK and offshore. Over the course of Arete’s investment, Leonard Curtis has achieved remarkable expansion, with revenues increasing from £26 million to over £45 million, head count growing from 230 to over 320, and its UK office network expanding from 18 to 30 locations. Growth during this time has been driven by a mixture of organic and acquisitive growth with four acquisitions, two bolt-ons and two which added additional capabilities to the Group.

Arete's relationship-led, supportive investment and portfolio model enabled LC to pursue a partnership approach coming out of the pandemic, at a time of extreme uncertainty and market disruption, with the ambition to scale the platform toward future private equity investment.

Simon Lord, Partner at Arete Capital Partners, commented: “Our partnership with CEO Dan Booth and the entire Leonard Curtis team has been incredibly rewarding. Thisdeal represents a strong return for our investors and a real case study for the Arete model. Arete sourced, led and structured the deal off-market and provided support that went far beyond just capital. The team at Arete has significant professional services experience that we utilised when working with management on key operational initiatives and strategic acquisitions to build the business into the market leader it is today. We helped prepare the platform for its next chapter and are delighted to see a specialist investor like Pollen Street recognise the value created. We are immensely proud of what we have achieved together and wish the team and the new ownership of LC every success for the future.”

Dan Booth, CEO of Leonard Curtis, said: “We have our sights on building a business that is sustainable for many years to come and to represent something that we can beproud to be a part of. We are grateful to the team at Arete and Svella for their invaluable support and strategic guidance over the past few years, which has been instrumental ingetting us to this stage.”

The deal marks Arete's first exit since it began investing in 2021 and exits Arete and its investors in full with Simon Lord (Partner) and Jamie Newall (Investment Director) stepping down from the board.

KPMG acted as lead advisor on the transaction led by Amanda Ruddiman (Director) and Christian Mayo (Partner). BDO (Financial VDD) and Graph Strategy (Commercial VDD) also provided support. LC shareholders were advised by Hill Dickinson (legals) and PWC (tax).

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