16 September 2020: Zamo Capital has announced that four influential names in global private equity will help to build Europe’s first specialist investor in impact managers. According to the firm’s founder, Jim Roth, “Globally over $700bn is allocated to impact investing, and Zamo intends to help grow the industry to a trillion dollars and beyond.” In June, Zamo announced an investment in SASC, an impact manager that invests in the rapidly growing social housing market.

  

Neil Harper chairs the Zamo board and is an independent member of the Investment Committee. Neil was previously the Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Stanley AIP Private Markets, a $12bn global private markets fund.   

Patrick Scheurle has joined Zamo as a Partner. Previously CEO of one of the world’s largest impact investment firms, Blue Orchard, Patrick has first-hand experience of scaling an impact GP.  

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Rikkert Beerekamp, previously with AlpInvest and CFO and Head of IR at Avedon, also joins as a Partner.  

Merrick McKay, currently the head of Private Equity Europe at Aberdeen Standard, joins the Zamo board. 

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 Unlike funds of funds or other traditional approaches, Zamo will invest alongside impact GPs in a flexible manner to help them scale, including taking stakes in the GP, providing direct deal level funding, and in many other forms. 

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 Neil Harper is enthusiastic:  “Zamo Capital provides the full range of financial and non-financial tools for each stage of their life cycle. A manager with its first fund may need advice, contacts, and operating cash. In later funds it may need help meeting its ever-growing GP commitment and expanding internationally. By Fund 4 or 5, founders may want to exit to make way for new talent, Zamo can help by securitising their economics.  

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 “By investing into managers as aligned active partners, and accelerating growth, Zamo helps expand the investible universe of impact managers for institutional and other investors who are crying out for such opportunities.   

 “GP investing firms can structure deals to provide more attractive and better diversified returns for investors than they would get by investing simply as a traditional Limited Partner.”  

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 Patrick Scheurle notes, “Zamo closes an important gap by helping investment businesses to scale. Having access to growth capital and fundraising networks at critical inflection points greatly accelerates the path to scale. Potentially it can save years in development.”  

According to Rikkert Beerekamp, “Our team is purpose-built: we are agile and have the resources to help emerging managers to grow. We are financially aligned, so if they do well, we do well. And we are particularly well placed to help them raise funds - there isn’t an investor we will not be able to introduce them to.”   

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 Zamo was founded with the backing of Big Society Capital.  

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 * A number of roles are subject to regulatory and other approvals. Until approval for these roles is received, these individuals will function in purely advisory capacities.