Direct investments and structured capital across the EMEA region — from venture and growth capital to mezzanine financing and leveraged buyouts.
HELMS invests — through direct investments or placements via various strategy funds — advises, and structures clients’ capital across strong, quality companies within the EMEA region to create long-term, sustainable value. We consider opportunities across the private equity spectrum and at different business stages, raising and investing in opportunities that span venture capital, growth capital and mezzanine financing through to leveraged buyouts.
Our investment concentration for established and growth-stage businesses spans a wide range of industries, from business services, retail, consumer, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and industrials, to media/film and technology. For early-stage and venture capital commitments, our clients tend to focus more on life sciences and healthcare, AI and machine learning, fintech and energy.
For direct investments, we seek to strategically add value in our placements around the world, across early-stage, established and growth-stage companies alike. We believe it is vital to play a role in helping companies fully realise their growth and value potential — discovering value by identifying great, unique companies and enhancing their performance, minimising risk, and driving prospects by providing patient capital and operational support to existing strong management teams. Our approach is to genuinely help drive our portfolio companies to grow successful core businesses, create new initiatives, make advancing acquisitions, and upgrade technologies and systems in support of their long-term strategy and objectives.
At HELMS, direct investments are about more than providing funds and capital. We like to see, and help create, stronger businesses and stronger entrepreneurs through various strategies of transformation. It is vital to the long-term success of these companies that we bring the expertise of our team, partners and technical advisers to provide strategic direction, guidance and support across a range of operational advancements — including revenue, sales and profit growth, procurement, leadership and management development, technology and software optimisation, energy sustainability, and employee healthcare, benefits and incentives.
We seek, and take pride in, partnerships that allow us to work closely and cooperatively with senior management teams and entrepreneurs with strong track records of success. We believe the combination of our industry knowledge, investment experience and operational expertise gives HELMS the advantage in identifying, assessing and creating solid underlying value in investment opportunities.
We like to create real value by investing in organisations where our resources, calculated insight, global network of key relationships and operational support can drive positive change that unlocks a company’s maximum potential. Alongside the benefit to our investors, the advancements we implement also benefit employees, local communities and other stakeholders. We are patient investors, with a mid-to-long-term investment horizon, committed to creating lasting, sustainable value and the best long-term outcome for our businesses and beneficiaries.
Our investment methodology is based on a strict, rigorous and disciplined due diligence process, in which we measure market and idiosyncratic risk while identifying the vital catalysts for increased value. We only engage in friendly transactions, and work with talented management teams to achieve substantial results. Our specialised team helps maximise value by improving processes and business functions across all elements of operations.