BGF appoints Nicol Fraser as head of London & South East

BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor, has appointed industry veteran Nicol Fraser to lead its investment team in London and the South East.

Nicol joins from private equity firm Dunedin where he was a partner in the business. Nicol led the investment team, investing across a broad range of sectors, with a particular specialism in technology enabled business and financial services.

In his 20-year career at Dunedin, Nicol helped to support management buy-outs and invested growth capital for companies with enterprise values of between £20 million to £100 million.

Prior to Dunedin, Nicol worked for private equity house Bridgepoint. He started his career at Tenon where he spent five years working in corporate recovery.

In addition to Nicol’s appointment, BGF has onboarded six new members of the London and South East investment team since March 2020. These include Bethany Shiers who joins from CIL Management Consultants, Kamel Kasem from L.E.K. Consulting, Isabella Fox who joins from PwC, Adele Sung of Citi, Dennis Atkinson from ePlanet Capital and Simon Steward who becomes a permanent member of team following a period of consulting for BGF.

After 20 brilliant years at Dunedin, I am thrilled to be joining BGF to lead the dynamic and growing team in London. BGF has consistently increased its investment momentum over the past 10 years and has experienced a notable step up in deal activity this year including a number of high-profile investments and successful exits.

Nicol Fraser

“The pandemic has prompted many business founders to consider their longer-term strategies for growth and BGF continues to lead the UK market in minority equity investments and a partnership approach to value creation. I am excited to be joining a well-established and ambitious team.”

Andy Gregory, Chief Investment Officer at BGF, said: “We are delighted to welcome all of our recent recruits to the London office and are thrilled that Nicol will be joining to head up the team. Nicol’s extensive investment track record adds further strength to our operations as we look ahead to a strong pipeline of deal activity on both the investment and exit front.

“Across the UK, the investment teams have already deployed almost £500 million this year across 57 investments and completed 25 successful exits. Whilst the buoyant market backdrop has helped to drive these results – this step up in activity has been principally driven by our continuing maturity and strengthening of our operations. After ten years in the market, BGF has built a reputation and a credibility that gives us a formidable ability to originate and close deals across the country, whilst our growing exit activity clearly demonstrates the high quality of entrepreneurs and businesses we are backing. Put simply, our current results are the result of a lot of hard work coming to fruition and we are pleased to be continuing to attract top talent into in the business.”