We are experienced buy and build specialists:
We specialise in helping businesses scale both organically and through acquisition. In many cases, acquiring competitors can enable a business to scale faster. However, the key to a successful acquisition strategy is the acquirer’s ability to integrate the acquisition, bringing the acquired business’ infrastructure and services onto the acquirer’s platform.
We pride ourselves in helping generate momentum in buy and build strategies. We get involved in all areas of the acquisition process including helping teams identify, negotiate, fund, transact and create an integration plan for an acquisition strategy.
What specifically do we look for?
Some of the characteristics we look for include:
- Highly fragmented markets, which lend themselves to consolidation opportunities
- The ability to migrate customers and services onto the acquirer’s platform in an efficient manner
- Businesses with disruptive models
- A strong management team with the ability to maintain culture when scaling through acquisition
“From my experience of working with Adam and Andy, they are decisive and delivered on what they said they would deliver on. Importantly, when compared to other PE firms, they really get involved in driving value in the businesses they back, especially around buy and build strategies”
“I introduced Beech Tree to the team at Learnlight back in February 2017, since they invested they have helped the team develop a global strategy, bring on new management bandwidth and importantly help drive our international buy and build strategy. The team are highly respected by the Learnlight executives and continually challenge and offer advice to the team as we look to grow a global player in the ed-tech market”
“I have been working with Beech Tree since becoming the chairman of Wavenet in August 2016. My experience of them is that their structure allows them to be decisive and ensures that the boards of the businesses they back are where the key decisions are made, rather than in an external investment committee, as in many other PE firms. They have and continue to help the team at Wavenet through the buy and build strategy we are pursuing and continue to challenge the team to become the best player in the market”
“We met Andy and Adam during our process to secure the right partner, we really liked the guys from the start as they knew our sector and helped us to develop our strategy. They delivered on the deal we agreed, and they are straight forward to deal with. They are not ‘once a month investors’ and since they backed us in November 2018 we have already made our first acquisition. We had not made an acquisition before and as such their experience and expertise allowed us to move fast and secure the acquisition in a competitive process”
“We were introduced to Andy and Adam by our chairman, we ran an informal process with a number of international private equity firms. Compared to the other firms we met in the process, the Beech Tree team were straightforward, decisive and clearly focused on helping us drive value in our business. They understood our sector and we agreed a strategy with them that would enable us to become the market leader in language training across Europe, we have been pursuing an organic growth strategy supported by selective international acquisitions. Andy and Adam have been instrumental in helping us deliver our acquisition strategy including our recent acquisition in Germany. Beech Tree continue to be an important part of the Learnlight team and they act as a real business partner to my co-founder and I”
“Beech Tree invested in August 2016, Paul and Adam have been on the board since that date. They are senior people on our board who have the power to make decisions which means that all of our strategic decisions, whether to support acquisition or organic growth are taken at the board level. Paul and Adam have been with us on every acquisition and were instrumental in delivering our most recent acquisition which help transform the Wavenet Group. Paul and Adam have been supportive through the good times and the bad, as every business has both. How they acted post investment is what has been important to me”
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