Co-founders at All Seas Capital Partners, Marc Ciancimino & Cristobal Cuart, reflect on setting up a firm over the last two years, navigating the deals market post-pandemic and developing the team.

What is All Seas’ investment thesis and how has it evolved since you launched?

Marc Ciancimino: Our mandate is to provide capital to entrepreneur-owned and family-owned businesses. What’s distinctive about us is our pure focus on minority and hybrid types of situations, that makes us different from a lot of the mid-market PE firms. We provide transformational capital that allows those businesses to go for a step change in what they’re doing, but also help them on that journey to institutionalise themselves. If you deal with us, you’re dealing with a fellow entrepreneur and people who understand how much you value autonomy. If you’re speaking with us, you’re speaking with the decision makers.

Cristobal Cuart: Marc and I spent a lot of time making sure we’re very aligned with entrepreneurs and family-owned businesses that could potentially sell their assets, but who don’t really want to relinquish the majority of their equity because they believe in the next stage of growth and development of their business. This is very appealing to entrepreneurs and management teams. The type of capital we inject into a business is done in a way that gives us some downside protection and allows us to participate in that growth. Entrepreneurs and businesses think of us as providing capital, but also being the best in class of what private equity can provide. The other area we’re focused on is situations where one minority shareholder wants to exit the business, and the other majorities want a partner to step into their shoes. We see that sometimes with financial investors, but more often than not, with family-owned businesses, where one branch of the family wants to remain involved in the business, but the other would like some liquidity - that’s when we’re able to offer a structure of flexibility.

All Seas has completed three investments so far, what have those transactions looked like?

Ciancimino: From a sector point of view, we do look pretty broadly across sectors, but we do tend to focus on business services, healthcare and certain segments of the consumer markets. Typically, we look to invest €20-75m per deal, and we can do more if we’ve got some of our LPs investing alongside us. We’re backing businesses with €5m+ Ebitda, but require a catalyst to help them grow and institutionalise. We’ve backed an optician business, called the Hakim Group, where the founder is consolidating independent opticians into a larger group. Hakim Group is a UK independent optician group. All Seas is partnering with Hakim to accelerate the onboarding of new partner optician practices, which has grown from 120 practices when All Seas invested to over 275, and institutionalising and further embedding best practice within the existing business. Secondly, we have Attivo, which is an independent financial advisor platform that consolidates books of similar IFAs into a larger platform. All Seas is working closely with the Attivo team to accelerate the integration of smaller financial advisory firms and in the execution of key supplemental organic growth initiatives. Thirdly, SoMeD Santé is a dental and medical clinics business in France, and we’re providing capital to help with the rollout of further clinics across the country. We’ve got a strong pipeline of deals, having completed one just before the summer. And, as of July, we’ve deployed €150m.

How has All Seas differentiated itself from the market in the last few years?

Cuart: The team we’ve built has both credit experience, around underwriting, and strong private equity capabilities. We understand and appreciate how to add value, from board level support helping them on that journey of institutionalisation, helping with finding high calibre individuals if they have any gaps on their team all the way through to supporting organic and acquisitive growth. We’re being as interactive as possible from a partnership perspective, which is an important differential when winning hearts and minds of the minority position. That creates more alignment, and we can work very closely with management teams to achieve that.

All Seas has a pan-European approach. The deal team is based in London, but they are always travelling in Europe and it’s been very important for us to have the deal team speak local languages within those key geographies (in the UK, France, Spain and Germany). That comes as a testament that we’re building an institution and a platform to grow over decades to come. I think when we’re speaking to European entrepreneurs, they want to talk to the decision makers and be involved in those conversations, but to communicate in a language they’re more comfortable with.

All Seas is a signatory to the UN PRI and UN Global Compact principles. How do you incorporate ESG into your investments?

Ciancimino: ESG is incorporated into our investment approach and the way our deal team operates. We’ll look at everything from the outset to identify the aspects that are important to consider, and then through our due diligence process. Cuart: We integrate ESG considerations through the frameworks, but also through our two-step process that considers different ESG-specific factors, bearing in mind the sectors of our businesses. Every sector, every company and every situation is unique. We’ll approach ESG considerations from the due diligence stage, looking at the most important factors for that business, through to our value creation plan with best-in-class ESG practices. By actively focusing on a key number of ESG factors, you can make a company more valuable, more resilient and explore where the world is heading - not just from a thematic point of view, but helping management teams to predict the market opportunities or threats. They can then adapt their strategies and allocate resources accordingly.

What do the next five years look like for All Seas?

Ciancimino: Our highest priority is finding and executing on really attractive investments, and working with our existing portfolio companies. In the immediate future, it’s deploying the capital LPs have already committed, identifying deals and building up a really good portfolio. Once we’re in, we’ll work with management teams to take that step change and slowly but surely build up to the next level. We will continue to grow our team and build a strong culture, as the portfolio grows and the pool of capital grows.