ECI were delighted to have a highly successful 2024, deploying over £500m across five new platform investments. Investments included:
April 2024: TAG, an award-winning, high-touch global travel management company that specialises in arranging complex travel itineraries for the entertainment industry.
October 2024: Independent Governance Group, the UK’s leading provider of professional pensions trusteeship and governance services.
October 2024: Croud, the global full-service digital marketing company.
October 2024: CMap, a market-leading provider of professional services automation (PSA) software.
November 2024: Insurance Insider, a premier digital platform providing insight and analysis for the world’s top insurers, distributors, service providers and investors.
We supported our portfolio to achieve 17% revenue growth in the last 12 months, with the ECI Commercial Team supporting our management teams on key value add projects across everything from deploying AI to expanding into the US. In 2024 as part of our ECI Unlocked programme, we launched the first ECI Growth Summit and ECI Digital Summit, connecting leaders across our portfolio to discuss the growth drivers in their businesses.
40% of the acquisitions we supported our portfolio to deliver in 2024 were international, demonstrating the increasingly global scale of the management teams that we back. With 80% of our portfolio actively pursuing acquisitions, we look forward to further supporting teams with M&A in 2025.
In 2024, ECI realised its remaining shareholding in Auction Technology Group plc, generating a 4.4x return and 146% IRR from our reinvestment in 2020. This reflects a 10-year partnership across two funds since we first invested in ATG Media Group in 2014, reinvesting in 2020 from ECI 11 and then supporting the business through an IPO in 2021. Interactive Investor listed the flotation as the most successful IPO of 2021. It has been a pleasure working with the team over the last decade and we wish John-Paul and the wider team at ATG every future success.
We were delighted to welcome six new team members to ECI in 2024 as we continue to invest in our own business. Joining ECI this year was the newly appointed Head of People, Tamsin Webster, to help develop ECI’s team for future growth; Ludvig Hamilton, who joined the investment team, bringing experience of Nordic market; our Origination team welcomed both Christy Welsh and Sam Veevers, to help ECI and our investments identify potential investment opportunities; Chris Mockford joins our Investor Relations team bringing 10 years experience in fundraising and IR; and Olivia McGee who joins as Office Assistant, so along with Brenda will probably be the first person you see when you come to the ECI London office!
It was fantastic to achieve further award wins in 2024, being recognised as mid-cap PE House of the Year and also European Fund of the Year by the Real Deals Private Equity Awards.
