Recognition of our support for private equity backed businesses

On 4 October the British Private Equity awards will recognise those businesses that have made a significant contribution to the private equity sector across a number of categories. ThinCats is delighted to be nominated in the Lender of the Year category for the first time.

Having launched our dedicated private equity funding team a little more than two years ago, we are thrilled to be nominated alongside more established lenders including HSBC, Hayfin Capital Management and Permira Credit.

When creating our PE lending proposition we focused on a number of areas that we hope have been recognised by this nomination; the quality and experience of our team, the importance of speed and flexibility when developing bespoke debt structures and the transparency we strive to provide during the funding process. Underpinning our approach is a very clear focus on the lower mid-market and recognition that as a predominantly cash flow lender funding from our own balance sheet, we are fully aligned with the success of our borrowers.

2020 was undoubtedly a challenging year in which to launch a specialist PE debt team as we concentrated on supporting businesses with their immediate working capital needs caused by the various covid restrictions. Towards the end of 2020 we started to see a pivot towards funding more M&A transactions as new opportunities emerged and the backlog of deals that had been put on hold during 2020 started to clear. M&A momentum continued strongly throughout 2021 until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Q1 2022 coincided with a number of emerging macro issues to present a new set of challenges for PE backed mid-sized businesses.

Throughout this period we have continued to invest in our PE origination, credit and transaction management capabilities hiring people with the experience and skills needed to deliver a market leading service to lower mid-market investors and their advisers. These hires mean we now offer a comprehensive service to provide funding to businesses across the whole of the UK. For PE investors that focus on particular sectors we have funded numerous transactions in the leisure, technology and professional services sectors in particular.

Find out more about our team and the PE transactions we have funded

We were thrilled to receive further recognition of our PE funding capabilities on 28 September when we were nominated for the Private Equity/Venture Capital Deal of the Year award at the upcoming Business Insider Central & East Dealmakers taking place in November.