Sullivan Street Partners
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Our Strategy

Sullivan Street invests in businesses that have underlying stakeholder, operational, or structural complexities in the lower mid-market.

Our approach

Sullivan Street acquires controlling stakes in UK-headquartered businesses. We are sector agnostic and are drawn to situations with underlying complexity. Situation complexity limits bidding competition, allows for attractive valuations, and typically produces numerous levers for value creation and downside risk mitigation. An ideal situation for Sullivan Street would have one or more of:

Our Approach

Company or sector issues

that are identified and addressable. Such issues might be financial performance, capital structure issues, operational challenges, large contingent liabilities, or regulatory issues.

Opaque financials

because of poor accounting or data controls that shroud underlying value and are overlooked by ordinary investors.

Transaction issues

which may include conflicts of interest, shortage of bidders, poor access to management or diligence, or failed scorched earth auctions.

Our approach is to establish the appropriate capital structure to enable companies to deliver growth in uncertain times. From the get go, we look for complexities in processes, financials, transaction structures, or ownership models. We are able to structure attractive transactions and reduce risk by seeking out issues that are specific, identifiable, and fixable. Once we have the responsibility of stewardship, we reinforce why our entry price must stand up to long term horizons and take a scenario-based approach to valuations to ensure we are always seeking a capital preservation base case and company stability.

As operationally minded investors we can identify issues early on in a business’ development and are able to take on the market and operational risks that are usually unattractive to traditional private equity investors. Equally, as investment minded operators we are conscious of macro-economic drivers and are prepared to help when companies need resources to manage market risks and headwinds.

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Our approach

Sullivan Street acquires controlling stakes in UK-headquartered businesses. We are sector agnostic and are drawn to situations with underlying complexity. Situation complexity limits bidding competition, allows for attractive valuations, and typically produces numerous levers for value creation and downside risk mitigation. An ideal situation for Sullivan Street would have one or more of:

Company or sector issues

that are identified and addressable. Such issues might be financial performance, capital structure issues, operational challenges, large contingent liabilities, or regulatory issues.

Opaque financials

because of poor accounting or data controls that shroud underlying value and are overlooked by ordinary investors.

Transaction issues

which may include conflicts of interest, shortage of bidders, poor access to management or diligence, or failed scorched earth auctions.

Our approach is to establish the appropriate capital structure to enable companies to deliver growth in uncertain times. From the get go, we look for complexities in processes, financials, transaction structures, or ownership models. We are able to structure attractive transactions and reduce risk by seeking out issues that are specific, identifiable, and fixable. Once we have the responsibility of stewardship, we reinforce why our entry price must stand up to long term horizons and take a scenario-based approach to valuations to ensure we are always seeking a capital preservation base case and company stability.

As operationally minded investors we can identify issues early on in a business’ development and are able to take on the market and operational risks that are usually unattractive to traditional private equity investors. Equally, as investment minded operators we are conscious of macro-economic drivers and are prepared to help when companies need resources to manage market risks and headwinds.

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Situations

Sullivan Street seeks out complexity in transactions at acquisition with issues that are specific, identifiable, and fixable. With its operational expertise, Sullivan Street takes views that other potential buyers will not be prepared to, looking past the standard diligence to the fundamentals they mask. These situations typically include:

Operational model

Operational expertise at Sullivan Street is not an external resource but is inextricably involved at the highest level in all decision-making processes, risk judgements and structuring discussions. Therefore, the speed with which we can initiate these changes, projects or improvements is radically different from other firms.

Sullivan Street is extremely active in helping businesses in its portfolio improve operationally and works alongside management teams continuously to effect not just transformational change projects but also smaller incremental improvements. Our involvement with our businesses at all levels include:

  • Project support – providing dedicated resources for all types of business projects.
  • M&A support – M&A work is core to what we do and we assist and lead our businesses’ M&A strategies, diligence and execution.
  • Executive support – certain situations necessitate Sullivan Street to step into executive roles within its portfolio companies.
  • Shared offices – to ensure daily touchpoints with its portfolio companies Sullivan Street provides dedicated desk space in its central London offices for management teams and employees.

Our holistic model relies on a set of highly interlinked skills and operational competencies and that are inextricable when it comes to decision-making, risk judgement, and structuring discussions. Improving a business’ operations and effectively working alongside management is central to how Sullivan Street work as this model brings about both transformational as well as essential incremental changes.

To date, we’ve established new standalone central functions, developed export opportunities, launched business units, refocused sales propositions, increased productivity, and restructured logistics processes. We commit time and practical support to our portfolio companies and work collaboratively with management to analyse key performance, share the workload, and to ensure needs are not only met but anticipated.

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Our investments

Sullivan Street maintains a narrow portfolio to ensure maximum operational focus and support to management teams.

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