SCOTTISH private equity house Maven Capital Partners is on the verge of taking its workforce through the 100 mark, having set up 10 years ago with 22 people, as it expands and diversifies.

Managing partner Bill Nixon, revealing the imminent achievement of this key milestone, said that funds under management had now increased to more than £600 million. He noted this was up from about £120m when Maven started a decade ago.

Mr Nixon said: “We have seen significant growth in the last few years.”

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Since being set up in 2009, through a management buyout of private equity operations from Aberdeen Asset Management, Maven has increased its network of offices from five to 12.

Mr Nixon, who highlighted Maven’s diversification from running venture capital trusts into managing significant amounts of money for institutions and high-net-worth individuals and into investment in hotels and student accommodation, declared: “The business has expanded significantly over that period.”

He added: “We started really as a VCT (venture capital trust) manager. The private equity business these days now falls into three separate flows: there is the venture capital trust business, there is the high-net-worth syndicate business deal-by-deal [and] we closed our debut institutional buyout fund at £100 million, with a number of European and UK-based [investors].”

Mr Nixon also flagged Maven’s success in winning mandates to manage major public-sector funds, working mainly in conjunction with the British Business Bank.

He also highlighted Maven’s first housebuilding joint venture in Scotland, with Ambassador Homes, for the development of sites at Renfrew and Clackmannan. And he flagged Maven’s move into the retirement village land market.

Mr Nixon said: “In the last couple of years, the business has really taken a huge step forward. We closed the [Maven UK] Regional Buyout Fund at £100m. In the last two years, we have raised £80m for VCTs. We have added over the last two or three years a number of regional funds. That has allowed us to kick on and take the headcount to [nearly] 100 people.”

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Maven owns the Ibis Styles hotels at Miller Street and Douglas House in Glasgow. It last year sold the Hotel Indigo in Glasgow.

Mr Nixon said that he would now expect Maven to do between 70 and 80 deals, across all fund types, in a calendar year.

He added: “That is everything from a small debt line for an SME (small or medium-sized enterprise) to a £20m investment for a major stake in a large MBO (management buyout).”

Mr Nixon flagged Maven’s recent £16m investment to fund a secondary buyout of Cumbernauld-based CMS Window Systems from LDC (Lloyds Development Capital).

He noted that more than 30 of Maven’s staff are based at its Glasgow head office.

Mr Nixon said: “Glasgow remains at the core of our business operations, company secretariat, marketing, fund accounting…all of the key support [functions], compliance.”

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He added: “I would always have our back office in Glasgow because of the calibre of people we can get in Scotland [rather] than in London, where people tend to be far more transient.”

Mr Nixon, noting the business had started with six partners, said it had taken on five new partners in the last year.

He revealed he had sold down some of his equity to new partners, and made the case for wider ownership at senior levels in the business.

Mr Nixon, noting the business was wholly owned by its partners, said: “I am keen to see wider ownership within the firm because I like senior staff to have an owner mentality and owner behaviours.”

He said: “I guess the business really has morphed from being a narrowly focused VCT manager into a multi-asset, multi-discipline, investment management firm.”

Mr Nixon flagged the launch of Maven Bonds plc, which is aimed at retail investors and aims to generate a return “much higher” than they could get in a bank account, through loans to the UK property sector.

Asked how much investor money he hoped to attract into Maven Bonds, Mr Nixon said: “In the medium term, we would like to see £50m – [that] would be our initial target but we recognise that is going to take some time, just to get the product known.”

Mr Nixon revealed Maven was unlikely to build further hotels in Glasgow in the foreseeable future, declaring: “Glasgow is certainty reaching capacity for hotels, if you look at the number of developments there have been…I would suspect it would be unlikely we would develop another hotel in Glasgow.”

He said Maven still saw “significant opportunities” in student accommodation developments, highlighting its involvement in two such building projects in Stirling.

Mr Nixon added: “I think we would be cautious about student accommodation in Glasgow but students can be fickle. I think, if it was an absolute top-quality site, close to university, we would consider it [but] we see better opportunities now, having done two developments in Glasgow.”

Maven launched with offices in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Manchester, Birmingham and London. It has since expanded its footprint with operations in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Durham, Preston, Nottingham, Reading and Bristol.

The private equity house has been a significant player in oil and gas services sector investment.

Asked about his view of the current state of the oil and gas sector, Mr Nixon said: “We made some great returns in oil and gas. We then had three or four years in the doldrums. The focus then was very much on screwing down costs. Some of our businesses went on to three-day weeks...These businesses are without exception all trading better and some are back to pre-downturn levels.”

He added: “There are definitely buyers back in the market for oil and gas assets.”

In terms of general deal volume in Scotland, Mr Nixon said: “There is less deals in Scotland in comparison to the north of England. There is still a strong entrepreneurial spirit in Scotland and we see a lot of interesting projects. We would just like to see more of them.”