Fund Shack

Sanjay Panchal is a partner at Livingbridge, a leading international growth capital investor, where he specialises in healthcare. In this episode he speaks to Ross Butler about the opportunities for private equity investors across the healthcare sector.

Marcus Maier-Krug is partner and co-head of portfolio management at Arcmont. He has been working in private credit since before the global financial crisis. In this episode, recorded in November 2023, we discuss what constitutes alpha in private credit, what it’s attractions are as an asset class, whether it can retain the market share it has taken from the traditional banking world, the different mindset and culture of private credit lenders vis a vis their borrowers, and much more…

Alejandro Alcalde Rasch is a senior director in Advent International‘s portfolio support group. He joined Advent in 2010 having been chief transformation officer and head of supply at Gröhe AG and a partner in McKinsey’s chemicals practice. In this Fund Shack podcast, Alejandro talks to Ross Butler about the genesis of Advent’s dedicated portfolio support group, how it has grown over time, what he looks for in value creation professionals, how the team works alongside deal executives and the importance of a value creation plan. [00:00:00] Ross: You’re listening to fund Shack. I’m Ross Butler, and today I’m speaking with […]

Harvard professor Josh Lerner explains the risks and requirements of public intervention in establishing a thriving venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Professor Lerner tells Ross Butler that seeding a venture capital industry is a difficult and slow process – it’s not just the case of emulating Silicon Valley. With reference to his classic work, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams‘, Ross Butler asks for Josh’s key recommendations, and in particular whether increasing the supply of venture capital or the demand for it, is the more sensible route for policymakers. With reference to the US, Japan, Australia, the EU and Great Britain, this […]

Andros Payne talks to Ross Butler about the holy grail of private equity value creation: a systematic, quantitative approach to cultural and behavioural change. What makes businesses work well? Andros Payne is an engineer and entrepreneur who has spent two decades codifying and benchmarking the behaviours of senior and middle managers that are proven to drive growth and underpin cohesive and healthy cultures. His firm, Humatica, has worked with some of the leading private equity firms in applying the methodology to their portfolio companies. In this Fund Shack podcast, he explains how he has managed to make objective and transparent […]

Private equity podcast with Ross Butler and Reynir Indahl of Summa Equity on Impact investment.

Warren Hibbert of Asante Capital Group explains the log-jam in the private capital fundraising market on the Fund Shack podcast

Douglas Hansen-Luke speaks to Ross Butler on the Fund Shack podcast. Topics: impact investing, university spin-outs, pension fund reforms.

Jonathan Blake is head of international funds strategy at Herbert Smith Freehills. In the 1980s, Jonathan was responsible for devising the very first limited partnerships for venture capital and private equity in the UK and Europe, and was responsible for convincing the British government that these closed-ended funds were a legitimate structure and valuable business […]

Trevor Hope is Chief Investment Officer of Gresham House Ventures, the growth capital arm of one of the UK’s oldest companies. In recent years, the firm has been growing rapidly, consolidating the market for Venture Capital Trusts, tax-break vehicles for individual investors to access growth business in the UK. In this podcast with Ross Butler […]

The so-called perma-crisis of political and economic volatility witnessed in the UK, and beyond, has made the business of raising and investing long-term funds is even more uncertain than usual. To help private markets practitioners navigate these choppy waters, we spoke with David Gauke, Damien Crossley and Shailen Patel from Macfarlanes. David Gauke is one […]

Laura Dillon leads Waterland Private Equity‘s Dublin office, which she established in 2020. Laura has had a varied career both in private equity and business. She has worked at several private equity firms, including Apax Partners and Riverside, and set up a distribution business with her family that was sold to a corporate acquirer. In […]

Paul Newsome is head of portfolio management at Unigestion, a Switzerland-based asset manager with a global private markets platform. Paul has been at the firm for two decades, during which he has set up its private markets operation in North America, and has been instrumental in establishing its directs, co-investment and secondaries programmes. In this […]

David Larsen has been at the forefront of alternative assets valuation policy for several decades. He is managing director at Kroll, which was acquired by Duff & Phelps in 2018, and advises many of the largest alternatives institutions on private equity transactions and valuations policy. He has been vice-chair of IPEV – the International Private […]

Michael Lindauer is co-CIO of Allianz Capital Partners. He joined the institution in 2003 and has been an influential decision-maker with regards to backing private equity managers, and a respected and informed LP. He is based in Europe and has responsibility for ACP’s global private equity investment programme. He talks to Ross Butler of Linear B Group about Allianz’s investment business and market-view, approach to GP selection and terms, and much more. This is a must-watch conversation for any private equity manager who wishes to understand how an experienced and thoughtful institutional investor approaches fund investment opportunities. In this Fund […]

Jim Strang is chairman of HgCapital Trust, a senior adviser to CVC Capital Partners, independent director at the Business Growth Fund, a senior adviser at Bain & Company, an advisory director at Campbell Lutyens, a Fellow at the London Business School, and a senior adviser at Hamilton Lane. Back by popular demand, this is Jim’s second time on Fund Shack. We talk about the state of private markets and how the industry grows from here. Inside this Fund Shack private equity podcast…

David Ewing is a managing partner at ECI Partners and one of the UK mid-markets best known investors. He speaks to Fund Shack's Ross Butler.

Subscribe now: Apple Podcasts | Spotify Mirja Lehmler-Brown is the founding managing director of Hayfin Capital Management‘s Private Equity Solutions investment team. She previously worked with Hayfin founder Tim Flynn (listen to his Fund Shack podcast here) at Goldman Sachs, before moving into PE fund investment with Aberdeen Asset Management and Scottish Widows. Ross Butler (00:00): You’re listening […]

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify In 2019, Tariq Fancy quit as BlackRock’s most senior sustainability investor.  In 2021, he released an in-depth three-part essay explaining his disillusionment with the concept of stakeholder capitalism and the ESG investment industry that has grown up alongside it.  In this private chat, he explains why sustainable investment is ineffective and what the […]

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify  In his 20s, Luke Johnson led the acquisition of Pizza Express and as chairman, helped it become the UK’s leading pizza brand. He has since established and helped develop household names, Strada, Giraffe, the Ivy, Zoggs and Integrated Dental Holdings, as part of his family office vehicle, Risk Capital Partners. He is a successful newspaper columnist, author, former chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, and current Chairman of The Institute of Cancer Research. In our exclusive podcast, Luke provides a critique of private equity, a critique of public markets, a critique of lockdowns and some of the most sensible advice we’ve heard yet about how businesses should be run in this brave new world. Uncorrected transcript\some inaudible parts Ross Butler: You’re listening to a Fund Shack, private chat number 29. Welcome to Fund Shack. I’m Ross Butler, and today I’m here with Luke Johnson, a well known entrepreneur, businessman, philanthropist, and private investor, Luke. Welcome. And I have to say thanks so much for coming to meet us physically, because this is the first time we’ve been back in the studio 18 months and personally I think it makes a real difference. Nice to see. I was looking over your bio in preparation for this. And I had to say, and I don’t say this just a flatter you, but I was amazed at the breadth of your undertakings and your achievements. So you’ve got obviously a varied portfolio. And within that I recognized about three quarters of the businesses. Now you do consumers, so maybe that’s not so surprising, but that leap out of me, then you’ve been a successful newspaper columnist over years, if not decades. And I know that that’s not easy to sustain and you’ve been very active on the philanthropic side. You’ve publish books. This is quite a productive repertoire. Now you only get one life, so it obviously doesn’t seem strange to you, but why do you think it is that you’ve managed to be so productive across so many relatively varied domains? Luke Johnson: Well, I think I’ve always liked to be busy and I have a father who has had an extremely long career and although he stuck to the one career of being a writer, a journalist and a historian, he, he was incredibly productive and wrote many, many millions of words and published 40 books and so forth. So I think he gave me a good example to follow as a role model. And you know, to a degree, I think life is what you make of it. And if you have the energy, there are always opportunities. I think given that most of us perhaps we’ll live to, you know, be in our eighties. That means we might well have a 50 year working career. And it seems to me, therefore that we should all plan to have at least two different careers and possibly more I’ve always been interested in people who’ve done a variety of things rather than just one profession and stuck to that their whole working life and then retired. None of that interests me in the slightest. Ross Butler: It rather goes against the grain these days, cause everyone wants to specialize to such a great degree. And if you’re seen to be your specialist in more than one area you’re seen as an amateur in at least one of those, <