Investment Manager

Investment management activities

The investment management activities of the five Baronsmead VCTs are undertaken by a specialist firm of investment managers, ISIS EP LLP (ISIS). ISIS fulfils the following roles:

• Selecting the most promising sectors for investment
• Developing and retaining a resource of specialist investors to cover the UK market
• Finding, winning and completing the best investment opportunities in a competitive market for scarce assets
• Actively managing the investments in unquoted and Aim companies

Key investment managers

The key managers at ISIS responsible for leading the investment activities of the Baronsmead VCTs are listed below:

Peter Clarke Read More

Andrew Garside Read More

Henrietta Marsh Read More

ISIS is one of the largest and most experienced teams focused on VCT investment.

How is ISIS different?

In the private equity market there is a large number of competitors with significant funds seeking to invest in the limited number of transactions within the UK economy each year. ISIS seeks to gain advantage in the following ways:

• Being proactive to target companies directly to seek opportunities rather than waiting to be introduced by an intermediary;
• Building sector knowledge to identify attractive sub-sectors and make ISIS more able to add value to the investee companies after investment;
• Actively managing our investments by joining the boards of the investee companies to maximise upside and react quickly in the event of underperformance;
• Spreading our executive resource across four locations in the UK so the expertise is close to the markets

Industry sectors

ISIS gains competitive advantage by building knowledge and experience in sectors. This makes it easier to spot opportunities. The sectors we target are:

• Consumer products and retail
• Business services
• Financial services
• Healthcare and education
• IT services and media

There is further information and case studies on the ISIS website

ISIS geographical coverage

ISIS has investment offices in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. This is to ensure ISIS has executives close to the regional markets to be able to react quickly and spot opportunities earlier than competitors, some of which only have an investment team based in London.

Business development

ISIS has a strong culture of being proactive to find unquoted investment opportunities in addition to introductions from intermediaries. Every executive in the business has some responsibility for identifying potential target companies to build relationships with. To support this, ISIS has a team of three executives that solely focus on managing this activity.

Portfolio management of unquoted investments

Making an investment in a business is only the start. To maximise performance of the company and the Baronsmead investment, ISIS executives are closely involved and influential in the investee's strategy, make up of the senior management team, monitoring financial performance and the ultimate exit. Two ISIS executives manage every investment with one executive joining the Board as a Non Executive Director. In addition, an independent experienced Chairman is also appointed to lead the Board. Active portfolio management is critical to investor performance. ISIS has a team of four executives who are experienced portfolio specialists.

Ownership

ISIS EP LLP is an independent business owned by individual partners