Sovereign gears up for fund launch following departures

The firm is understood to be targeting between £500-600m for the next-generation vehicle, despite the fact that Sovereign Capital IV was only 45% deployed as of December 2018 after holding a final close on £395m in August 2014, according to Unquote Data. The fund is now 64% committed, including capital reserved for bolt-ons, according to a source.

One source told Unquote that deployment has been slower than expected as Sovereign has struggled to source assets at acceptable prices in a frothy market. However, another source said that it is broadly in line with predecessor funds and as buy-and-build investors they naturally tend to invest a substantial amount into platforms even after the end of the investment period.

Sovereign Capital III held a final close on £350m in June 2010 and has four assets remaining. It is understood to have generated a return of 3.4x gross.

Since founding partner Michael Needley left in 2017, Sovereign has seen a total of 11 departures from the team, with partner Neil Cox the most significant exit.

A spokeswoman for Sovereign told Unquote: "Sovereign has a large senior partner team of eight (Andrew Hayden, Dominic Dalli, Alex Hay, David Myers, Jeremy Morgan, Matthew Owen, Andrew Pars and Kevin Whittle), five of whom have worked together for 14 years or more. With an overall team of 37, it's natural that as the firm evolves and matures that there is change."

Other departures from the investment team include directors Jose Rodriguez Cesenas (who left after 15 years with the firm), Dyson Bogg (now partner at Kerogen Capital), Simon Jobson (now at Duke Street) and Sunil Jain (now partner at Synova), as well as investment executives Oliver Hedley-Whyte (now with Australian firm Odyssey Private Equity) and Alexander Postlethwaite (now with growth investor TPA Capital).

In addition to these departures, three executives have left from the origination team. Adam Philippsohn left for BGF at the end of last year, while Oliver Wilkins and Skyler ver Bruggen left earlier this year. Ver Bruggen is now origination manager at ECI Partners.

Sovereign has begun replacing the departing team members and has appointed two investment managers (James Dargan from Lazard and Nate Janks from Numis), and two investment executives (Matthew Rowe from Barclays and Tom Wilding from Guidepoint) in the last year. The firm also expects to announce a financial services- and insurance-focused investment manager in the near future. On the origination side it has appointed James Buckhalter from Deloitte's innovation practice Doblin.

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• Topics
• Funds
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• people moves
• ECI Partners
• BGF (Business Growth Fund)
• Barclays
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• Synova Capital