Strategic thinking suits Maven boss Nixon

At 51, Mr Nixon has achieved plenty in the world of Scottish financial services since joining the Clydesdale Bank straight from school.

He suggests his journey from bank clerk to private equity boss has not been conventional, yet the path he has followed has been far from haphazard.

"I guess I'm a fairly unusual animal for a chief executive of a private equity business in that I started my career as a very humble 17 year old bank clerk, 35 years ago," he reflects.

"I spent my formative years working for Clydesdale Bank-NAB learning about financial services in the early '80s, starting down the traditional paths of the old bank exams."

Nixon credits the Clydesdale with boosting his career ambitions by putting him on its accelerated training programme. It led him to joining its corporate team in 1987 and then its private equity business in 1991, initially as an investment manager.

In 1996 he was made a director and he was running the business 1999 when it was snapped up by Aberdeen Asset Management.

The "consensual" acquisition heralded a move to the north east, where Mr Nixon would go on to spend 10 satisfying years.

There were highs at Aberdeen, such as the acquisition of venerable Edinburgh fund manager Murray Johnstone. And there was the not inconsiderable low of the "splits" (split capital investment trust) crisis, which put the business under considerable stress.

But his defining move arguably came in 2009 when, at the height of the financial crisis, he staged a buyout of AAM's private equity business.

With Aberdeen increasingly focused on retail investors, and less on private equity, the buyout had been made with the company's blessing.

Yet it proved to be a challenging process, Mr Nixon recalls, and not without risk.

"It wasn't just a buyout, it was a start-up of a financial services business immediately post the failure of Lehmans," he explained. "It was the middle of the great financial crisis, arguably the most challenging time in the last 70 or 80 years to start a business in this space.

"So it was a bit of a step into the unknown but I think at that point myself and my senior colleagues had reached a point in our careers where we had spent many years backing entrepreneurs and seeing individuals develop and build businesses.

"Although we had a lot of freedom in Aberdeen, it was a natural progression for us to acquire the business and a natural exit for Aberdeen at that time."

Maven launched with a "dowry" of around £100m of funds under management from Aberdeen.

Back then its clients were drawn from two groups - venture capital trusts (VCTs) and a new debt intervention fund (now the British Business Bank). It set out to help companies source finance when banks were unwilling or unable to lend because their balance sheets were stretched.

Indeed, Maven's early moves were greatly influenced by the shortage of capital on the market which followed the financial crash.

Mr Nixon recognised it was going to be difficult to raise an institutional limited partnership fund, partly because capital was scarce and also because it lacked a track record.

Alternative strategies to grow the business were pursued, one being the launch of a high net-worth co-investment business, giving individuals and family offices access to its private equity deals.

It now has an investor base of more than 200 across the UK.

"That model has worked extremely well, and it works well complementary to VCTs, which is committed capital," Mr Nixon said.

Expansion has come in other ways.

In 2011 Maven was mandated to the Scottish Loan Fund, working in conjunction with the Scottish Investment Bank. So far it has raised more than £113 million to invest £250,000 to £500,000 in growth and export focused Scottish companies, with 18 companies backed so far.

From that Maven was appointed 18 months ago to run the Greater Manchester Loan Fund, which provides loans of between £100,000 and £500,000 to companies which are finding it difficult to access finance. Two people have been hired by Maven to specifically work on the fund, which has invested in nine companies to date.

Elsewhere Maven has expanded successfully into property as a complementary asset class to its activities in private equity, assembling a team who scour the market for development opportunities.

Projects completed to date include the conversion of Claremont House in the city's west end from office into student accommodation.

More recently a syndicate has been raised to build an Ibis Styles Hotel in Miller Street, in the Merchant City, while a building next to the King's Theatre on Bath Street has been acquired to convert into 70 student accommodation units.

Mr Nixon said: "We can turn an idea into a finished product and achieve a number of virtuous outcomes. We can improve the city by regenerating an asset that is either tired or out of use into something much more productive and aesthetically attractive. At the same time we can drive investment returns for our investors."

Although focused largely on Glasgow to date, Maven's property business has worked on projects in Liverpool and Wales. In addition to its own developments, it has also acquired residential portfolios of properties from banks with a joint venture partner.

Given the breadth of its current activities, it is little wonder that Mr Nixon declares that Maven is "unrecognisable" from when it started out.

With six offices around the UK, employing 45 staff, and £350m of funds under management, the bald statistics hammer home the progress it has made since 2009.

It has a client base of 12,000 retail and 200 high-net worth investors, as well as institutional and local authority investors, and is active across a broad spread of asset classes and product types.

The investment landscape is not without its challenges of course.

Mr Nixon continues to see value in backing businesses in Scotland and northern England, certainly compared with London and the south east, but acknowledges the reality brought by the lower price of oil. Not that is overly worried about Maven's investments in this sector.

Speaking earlier this month, Mr Nixon noted: "The Aberdeen office has been the jewel in the crown of the Maven business for many years.

"Obviously as we sit today there has been a 20 per cent bounce in the oil price in the last week or two so we see a steady recovery as being the most likely outcome.

"That said, there is no doubt that short to medium term the North Sea will see a reduction in spending. We've already seen contractor rates being reduced across the board.

"We're in the fortunate position in that we have deliberately only invested in companies which are active in very defensive sub-sectors of the energy services industry, such as maintenance, integrity, software, cleaning and other essential, mandatory spend.

"Beyond that we are sector agnostic - we are absolutely generalist investors."

Mulling his own career, Mr Nixon said the private equity has given him a "very rewarding career", and highlighted the intellectual stimulation it offers.

"The thing that gives me the most satisfaction is a happy investor base," he added. "We pay between six per cent and nine per cent tax free to our investors and I know that many of them are retired or rely on that income to supplement pension or other income."

Mr Nixon has also launched a scheme he hopes will make a difference to young people in Glasgow.

Working in conjunction with Glasgow City Council and secondary schools in challenged areas, Maven Academy will take on six young people who will serve a four year internship with the firm.

At the end of the programme one student will be selected for a full-time training contract with Maven in Glasgow."I'm aware there are many bright kids whose parents don't have the right contacts or relationships with people in business, but have a talented child who is capable of doing something in their career," Mr Nixon said.

Looking back on the deal which launched Maven, Mr Nixon notes that the timing proved to be fortuitous, in spite of the prevailing conditions. "Launching a business in the middle of the great financial crisis was a gamble, but ironically we have prospered because of the shortage of capital in the system at that time," he said.

"A number of the mandates that we have successfully secured have come to the market is because of the shortage of capital from conventional sources.

"We've prospered from that dislocation of capital in the market, and we have proven beyond doubt that there is a market for these alternative sources of finance."