Investment only gets you so far
Mercia is a proactive specialist asset manager with a focus on ambitious businesses seeking venture, private equity or debt finance to scale their businesses.
We are exclusively a UK domestic investor, with focus on the UK regions
“We aim to be the first-choice provider of capital across our specialist private capital classes for businesses that typically seek less than £10million.”
Our history
Established as a start-up back in 2010, Mercia was founded to address the regional disparity between opportunity and capital access. Mercia is focussed exclusively on the UK, with c.140 employees and offices across the UK regions to ensure that that the requisite investment team is within two hours from prospective and existing investments. Mercia has backed over 1,000 businesses over the last five years and, today, Mercia has a portfolio of c.600 companies, c.80% of which are based outside of London and the South East of England.
Business model
Mercia’s investments across its four asset classes are powering ambitious regional SMEs with the capital that they need to grow. Our business model is designed specifically to support the funding needs of companies through their journey from origin to exit.
Mercia by numbers
Portfolio co-investment
Transactions in the last five years
Unrestricted cash
Portfolio companies
A differentiated focus
We were founded on deploying capital across the UK, predominantly outside of London and the South East where historically, there has always been a significant oversupply of capital creating high pre-money valuations. The UK regions offer exciting deals with businesses that are priced sensibly and have relatively modest capital needs that we can, if we chose to, support solely from our own means.
The best teams
Get this right and a business will grow. People are the centre of everything that we do, whether it’s strengthening the industry-leading management teams that we invest in, or developing and collaborating with our colleagues, we strive to live our values and bring our best game to work every day.
Deep experience
Our specialist approach delivers deep domain knowledge, not just about our sectors, but equally, the regions in which we do business. This specialism matters to our portfolio because this knowledge-driven approach drives our investment success.
Capital runway
Mercia has c.£1.4billion of assets under management with c.£378million of unrestricted cash.
We also have powerful relationships and a deeply embedded ecosystem to provide access to a wealth of opportunities to leverage co-investment and the syndication that takes businesses to the finishing post.
How we do it
Source well
Optimised returns are driven through deep industry experience and powerful partnerships that drives deal origination that allows Mercia to see 60% of deals in the regions.
Buy well
We are focused on investing in the highest quadrant of businesses that have appropriate pre-money valuation. We tailor the deal structure to ensure that we can bring our complete connected capital solution into play and we recognise leadership teams that we can support in achieving the commercial drivers of value creation.
Support well
Through focused investment and platform capabilities we have the full breadth of knowledge and networks to advance our portfolio companies.
Sell well
Our ability to provide follow-on funding and capital for acquisitions supports optimum exits and timely realisations.
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Support during COVID-19
Our teams have produced a series of webinars providing valuable advice on business change during the pandemic
Watch them here