Principles

I · Continuity

Most of what we acquire stays as we found it: the team, the location, the name above the door. A business that has earned its customers over decades does not need to be remade. Our first instinct is to change as little as possible — and to explain ourselves before we change anything at all.

II · Autonomy

The people who built a business are usually the people best placed to run it. We do not install our own managers, and we do not run companies from a distance. We agree a clear direction and what good looks like, then leave operators to do their work.

III · A long horizon

We have no fund to wind up and no date by which we must sell. That frees us to make decisions that pay back over years rather than quarters — a roof, a truck, an apprentice — when the return is patient but real. We measure ourselves in decades.

IV · Honest reporting

We tell our investors and our companies the plain truth, in plain numbers. Good news travels on its own; it is bad news we make sure reaches us early. A business is easier to look after when no one is afraid to report a problem.

V · People before transactions

Behind every company we look at is an owner deciding what becomes of their life’s work, and a workforce whose livelihoods depend on the answer. We try never to forget it. We would rather lose a deal than win it by treating either carelessly.

An expensive signal

We do not give tax advice, and you should be wary of anyone who gives it before seeing your accounts.

A price only means something once someone has seen your accounts. Be wary of anyone who gives you a price before that, including us. A number given over the telephone, without a single year of accounts in front of it, is not an offer: it is a way of holding on to you while the real offer is decided, and it is almost always the same number that comes down later, once you have put months into the process. We tell you what we think your company is worth after a first conversation and a set of accounts, we put it in writing, and we do not go back on it at the end, unless there is something material that was not disclosed to us.

Sustainability

Sustainability, for us, means something concrete: the company has to be able to carry on without us and without you. That is measured in ordinary, expensive things. The warehouse roof repaired before it lets water in. The vans replaced before they start causing trouble for the crews out on the road. A young person hired and trained alongside an experienced technician for as long as that apprenticeship takes, and not for as long as the year’s budget will bear. A second in command able to keep the operation running when the person who has always decided is not there. We have no targets to announce and no reports to publish. We have only the obligation, which is ours and not that of some other owner a few years from now, to hand the company on to whoever comes next in better shape than we received it.