A new multi-family investment office has launched in the North West.
Arete will be based in Liverpool and Manchester, providing "transformational" private capital to some of the North West’s most ambitious entrepreneurs and companies, and it's been formed by five well-known figures from the region’s business world.
Arete’s founding partners are Mike Fletcher, Simon Lord, Ben Hatton, Matt Cheetham and David Moore. The investment office promises to work "exclusively with sophisticated investors, high net worth investors and family offices" - and provide a focused, structured and disciplined approach to private company investment.
Mr Fletcher, joint managing partner, said: “In founding Arete, we’ve created and assembled a partnership that brings together five friends who have a unique combination of business skills and a genuine interest in building great companies. Each of Arete’s founding partners has an incredible depth of experience and knowledge in their field to support a variety of businesses through the challenges they face to enable them to flourish.
“There is substantial private capital available and investors remain keen to deploy it in interesting opportunities, but there can be a reticence to do so in many cases due to poor past experiences when making direct but largely unmanaged positions in private companies. This is typified by poor information and a lack of influence to sort problems early enough which puts these investments at risk.
“Put simply, investors are keen to undertake risk-based investing but are seeking a more structured way to do this, through a partner that has a proven track record to manage investments and with whom they have a much more personal connection, which is exactly where Arete comes in.”
The investment office's mission is to go ‘beyond capital’ by influencing and steering businesses and their management teams in the post-investment phase towards growth and future capital events, as well as providing investors with "much closer" engagement with their investment manager.
Having already raised initial capital from investors, Arete has assembled a team of 12 and will initially be based in Liverpool and Manchester, with a presence in Yorkshire expected to follow later in 2021. The group hopes that during that time, Arete hopes its team to grow to between 20 and 25 employees.
The business is already actively working on a number of deals in the region that it expects to complete and announce in the next few months.
Joint managing partner, Simon Lord, added: “I’m genuinely excited about taking Arete to market at this time because agility, together with direct access to private investment and growth expertise have never been more important or sought after.
“Through using our wide range of relationships with principals and investors, we are focused on creating and providing access to proprietary deal flow – that’s our core DNA and that’s the opportunity we’re seizing with Arete.
“It’s our collective vision to create a leading private capital business with true alignment with our backers and entrepreneurs, which by doing so, will create a pipeline of future private capital opportunities.”
