Pollen Street Capital on hunt for CFO

Pollen Street Capital is looking to recruit its first chief financial officer as it gears up to deploy its recently-raised PSC Fund III, its first full fund since it spun out from RBS in 2013.

The London-based firm, which closed PSC III on £402 million ($557 million; €452 million) last month to invest in financial services businesses in Europe, says its larger size and increased requirements have prompted the move to recruit a CFO.

“(A CFO) is one of the roles we’re looking to and it’s probably something we will put in place just as we become a little bit larger. We have multiple funds, a number are publicly listed vehicles so the scale of operations, the public reporting, the diversity of product sets and the overall consistency leads you to recruiting someone with greater oversight,” Lindsey McMurray, founder and managing partner at Pollen Street told PEI.

McMurray confirmed the firm is also seeking to hire “three to four” people at associate level in private equity. “We will be bringing them in in short order,” she said.

The firm has grown markedly since its 2013 spin-out. The firm says it employed 13 people at the time of its independence. It now employs just short of 60 people across private equity, private credit and operation.

“We’ve been very partner heavy and that’s partly because of our origination model. We’re very bilateral, origination is very much through our network, not desk-based research or cold calling into owners, managers. We’re typically working with our network to get warm introductions and we need senior people for that.”

The firm targets financial services business in Europe and says its offering is differentiated because “the regulator is a friend and some GPs don’t want to go into regulated businesses,” according to partner Magnus Christensson.

“Everything we do is regulated, every portfolio company is in the regulated space. We are dealing with lots of regulation on a day-to-day basis and our generally approach is that we embrace regulation. We’re not scared of it. We try to turn it on its head and say being good at regulation is a value-creating subject matter expertise,” McMurray said.

Pollen Street held a first close in March 2016 for PSC Fund III and a final close above its £350 million target at the end of January this year. The firm, previously known as SOF Investments, raised a top-up fund from investors in 2014.