June 2018
Equiteq, the leading M&A advisory firm for companies in the knowledge economy, is pleased to announce that it has advised Dartmouth Partners Ltd, a rapidly-growing, boutique recruitment consultancy, on its recent minority investment from Literacy Capital plc. The transaction closed on June 15, 2018.
Dartmouth Partners has grown into a leading recruitment firm that partners with ambitious, forward-thinking companies to help them recruit rising stars and future leaders. Founded in 2012 by Logan Naidu, the company has become the market leader in placing graduate to director level staff in the financial services, legal and corporate development and strategy sectors. Dartmouth Partners has offices in London and Frankfurt and ambitious plans to add new locations in the foreseeable future.
Partnering with Literacy Capital will support Dartmouth’s geographic and sector expansion and the company’s continuous investment in growing and developing its current teams. In addition, Dartmouth will benefit from the strengthening of its senior team, with the appointment of Jess Watts as non-executive Chairman and Neil Cartwright as CFO. Jess was formerly the CEO of recruitment company R4S, which he grew to £300m of revenue when the business was sold in 2011; more recently he has acted as Chairman of several other growth businesses. Neil was previously CFO of Purplebricks, the online estate agency, from an early stage through a rapid growth period and a successful IPO in 2015; prior to Purplebricks, Neil was a Divisional Finance Director at Capita Plc. Jess and Neil join the board with immediate effect, alongside Gavin Sharpe, who previously co-founded and ran the legal recruitment specialist Shilton Sharpe Quarry and who joined Dartmouth as a non-executive director in January 2016.
Discussing the investment from Literacy Capital, Dartmouth’s CEO, Logan Naidu, said, “We’re greatly looking forward to working alongside them, disrupting the recruitment market and helping to achieve our ambitious goals and helping build our clients’ businesses.”
Literacy Capital’s Chairman and former Capita CEO, Paul Pindar, commented, “We look forward to working with Logan and the Dartmouth team. Logan has terrific ambition and the business has great potential. The next few years are likely to be a very exciting journey and we will provide all of the support that we can.”
Discussing the transaction, Ed Groome, Managing Director of M&A in Equiteq’s London office, said, “It’s been a pleasure working with Logan and the team at Dartmouth to help them find the right solution for the next, exciting stage of the company’s growth. With Equiteq’s knowledge of this market, we were able to identify Literacy as the ideal partner to support their ambitious growth plans.”
Regarding Equiteq’s role in the transaction, Logan Naidu added, “We’ve worked with Equiteq in the past as a client and got to know them well. Their focus on working with companies in our sector made them the obvious choice when we were considering our options. Ed and the team have provided superb support throughout the past few months and, in Literacy, have found us an excellent partner for the next stage of growth.”
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