Company Profiles

Gartmore And Hermes Complete Joint Venture

Dessi Sevdina London 8 April 2010

Gartmore And Hermes Complete Joint Venture

Gartmore Investment Management and Hermes Fund Managers, both London-based firms, have completed a joint venture to combine their private equity fund of funds businesses into a new vehicle, Hermes GPE, creating a new business which will have combined assets under management of £4.1 billion (about $6.1 billion).

According to Hermes Fund Managers, the new firm will be a continuation of the private equity investment activities carried out by both Hermes and Gartmore. But this combined vehicle will further benefit clients by creating greater economies of scale and increasing resources by covering the global private equity market. Responsible investing will be at the core of the new Hermes GPE investment approach, the firms said in a statement.

Alan MacKay has joined Hermes GPE as chief executive officer, leaving his recent position as lead partner at 3i, where he has worked for over twenty years. He will work closely with co-chief investment officers Susan Flynn and Peter Gale, who previously headed the respective teams at Hermes and Gartmore. Kevin Carter, NAPF investment council member and former European head of investment practice at Watson Wyatt, has been appointed as an independent non-executive chairman of the new business.

The firms are keen to highlight that the new business is built on two strong platforms. “It creates one new, enlarged private equity specialist with considerable investment talent across the combined team. There are huge opportunities in private equity for proven teams that offer responsible investment management. We have built these qualities into Hermes GPE to better serve existing investors and to attract new clients with exactly the proposition they are asking for," MacKay said.

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