Swinton Park in North Yorkshire was the venue for this year’s Endless Fund II Investor Conference. Endless Partner Darren Forshaw reflects on the main learning points from the event
Endless has 12 institutional investors or Limited Partners (LPs), to give them their technical term. These investors include Family Offices, Pension Funds, Charitable Foundations and Funds of Funds and they collectively have many billions of pounds under management.
At the pre-conference dinner the LPs were given the chance to meet executives from Crown Paints, the Works and Vasanta. The management proposition is vital to the success of an Endless turnaround and it was fantastic for our LPs to meet some of the management teams that are successfully driving change in our investments.
The conference itself focused on Endless Fund II’s performance since the launch in April 2008. With the backdrop of economic recession the current performance of Fund II, which shows an increase in valuation of 80% since inception, was extremely well received by the LPs.
What the Investors Have to Say about Endless
A significant piece of feedback from the LPs placed Endless in the top quartile of their investment portfolios across Europe and the US. The Investor Survey showed that 100% of the Investors expressing an opinion were “very pleased” about their decision to invest in Endless Fund II. 100% of respondents were also “mostly” or “very” pleased about the Fund’s activity and performance in the past year.
A particular focus of the Conference was on the new additions to the investment portfolio in 2009/10. Extensive case studies on the Vasanta, JTF Wholesale and Trutex acquisitions were presented which highlighted Endless’ ability to mobilise teams extremely quickly and execute transactions in a matter of weeks as was the case in all three investments. The LPs see this as a clear differentiator for Endless compared to others in the market.
Darren Forshaw, Partner at Endless reflects, “The investor conference allowed Endless to benefit from the wealth of knowledge and experience in our LP investor base and share ideas. The LP network continues to be a great source of experience and guidance, deal flow, ideas and opportunities and highlights that we are fortunate to have extremely proactive and experienced backers”.