Trio of City grandees back company targetting high-growth SMEs

City of London
Ansor plans to raise an initial £150m Credit: QQ7

A new company backed by a trio of City grandees has been launched, with plans to raise an initial £150m to fund promising entrepreneurs.

The business, named Ansor Ltd, has signed up Martin Morgan, the former chief of Daily Mail and General Trust, David Weaver, ex-chairman of Jefferies, and Tom Boardman, the chairman of huge Swedish investment company Kinnevik.

All three join the board as non-executive directors. The company’s primary target sectors are energy efficiency, health, professional services, compliance, property services and specialist manufacturing.

Akta Raja, co-founder and executive director of Ansor, told The Daily Telegraph the firm would focus on high-growth small firms that were “typically far under the radar for most institutions”.

Ms Raja and her three co-executives will together invest £7.5m to kickstart the business. She said the founders were targeting building a £500m business within five years.

“Our strategy of acquiring and combining profitable businesses into sizeable platforms will bridge this gap,” she said.

SMEs have historically attracted a low level of institutional investment, with companies boasting more than £20m in revenue attracting 14 times more investment than those with less last year – or £1.8bn compared to £25.4bn – the company said.

She added: “The UK has countless small entrepreneurial businesses that are profitable and growing fast. Often they have been built lovingly over decades, but taking them to the next stage has risks and requires different skills.

“As entrepreneurs who have built a number of small businesses, we know what life is like for them. We bring the operational know how and will share the risk to enable owners to focus on doing what they do best: be great entrepreneurs.”

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