Maven Capital Partners (“Maven”), one of the UK’s most active private equity houses, has appointed Steve Lewis and Jonathan Lowe as Investment Directors leading the Maven - MEIF Debt Fund team in the West Midlands and East and South-East Midlands respectively.
Based in Birmingham, Steve has responsibility for new MEIF investments across the Midlands, as well as managing portfolio investments. Steve joins Maven following a 30 year career in SME investment and banking, most recently with Handelsbanken in Wolverhampton. Steve has spent most of his career supporting business customers, large and small, whilst workingfor a number of UK-based banks. He has extensive experience of commercial banking having worked at NatWest, Barclays and the Bank of Scotland.
Based in Nottingham, Jonathan leads the MEIF East & South East Midlands team with responsibility for delivering new investments across the region, and managing portfolio investments. Jonathan brings over 25 years’ experience in banking, equity investment and SME finance, most recently as investment director and head of investor relations at Catapult Ventures and previously at Capital for Enterprise Ltd as portfolio director. Jonathan spent nine years at the East Midlands Development Agency where he was responsible for new loan and equity funds and the delivery of two major SME grant programmes.
These appointments follow the announcement of Maven’s appointment to manage £90m MEIF Debt funds, focused on providing debt funding to high-potential growth businesses located across both the West Midlands and the East & South East Midlands regions. Composed of two separate funds, of £50m for SMEs located in the West Midlands, and £40m for growth businesses in the East & South East Midlands, the fund will provide finance of between £100,000 and £1.5million.
Maven is one of the UK’s most active private company investors, with a long established record of working with advisers and supporting SMEs across the Midlands, and already manages a number of regional debt or equity mandates across the North of England and Scotland.
Andrew Ferguson, Partner at Maven, said:
“We are delighted to welcome Steve and Jonathan to the team and strengthen our presence across the region. Both already have considerable in-depth knowledge of the local SME market, and a range of sector specialist knowledge, allied to the national resource of Maven’s UK business. The Midlands has a well-deserved reputation as being a key driver in UK economic growth and producing innovative smaller businesses and our MEIF Debt Fund team is very much looking forward to working in partnership alongside Midlands SMEs.”
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.