Huntress
Transaction Background
In June 2000 Graphite Capital invested £2 million in the start-up of Huntress which is a diversified recruitment business operating in the secretarial, IT, accountancy and financial sectors. Huntress has fifteen offices mainly in the south east of England and has its head office in London.
Deal Attractions
Graphite backed a strong management team, headed up by Gary Laurence. The key members of the team hired high quality recruitment consultants in each of their chosen niche sectors. Huntress was cash generative at an early stage which partially funded the expansion and office roll-out. An even balance of permanent and temporary recruitment business provided stability of earnings through the contracted temporary staff and exposure to higher margins on the permanent placement business.
Achievements
- Huntress achieved higher turnover in its first year than any other recruitment firm
- Gary Laurence won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2004 and 2005
- the start-up was achieved using only 50 per cent of the funds committed to the transaction
- the company established a successful office roll-out model, maintaining an attractive 50:50 mix between temporary and permanent recruitment business
- the customer base includes 56 of the FTSE 100 companies
- turnover more than quadrupled between 2001 and 2005 to £53 million
Exit
- Huntress was refinanced in August 2005
- we have retained our controls over the business following the refinancing
- to-date we have received proceeds which represent 2.7 times our cost of investment
