ECI makes three senior hires

ECI Partners is expanding its investment team with three new hires, according to a statement from the firm.

Shiva Tiwari and Stephen Roberts joined as investment managers in March and April respectively, while Rory Nath joined the firm in May as an associate.

Tiwari joined from Credit Suisse's TMT group, and is based in the firm's London office, continuing to work with current 'technology enabled' investments in the ECI portfolio as well as helping to evaluate and close new investments.

Roberts, who joined from PWC's corporate finance division, will be based in ECI's Manchester office. He has worked with ECI as a secondee since September 2014.

Nath is the fourth member of ECI's commercial team, which assesses investment opportunities and supports growth initiatives after investment. Prior to ECI Nath spent two years as a strategy consultant at OC&C.

ECI's expanded investment team will continue to manage the firms existing funds as well as investing in new companies, according to the statement.

In September last year the mid-market firm closed its tenth fund on its hard-cap of £500 million (€626 million; $823 million) after just five months in market. The firm officially launched the fundraising in April, targeting £400 million, and held a first close on £350 million in July, PEI reported previously.

In February ECI made its first investment from the vehicle, acquiring a majority stake in salary sacrifice car scheme provider Tusker for an undisclosed sum. This month the firm agreed to acquire a “significant majority stake” in specialist cycling retailer Evans Cycles from current owner Active Private Equity in a deal understood to value the business at around £100 million (€135 million; $152 million).

Earlier this year the firm booked a 6.1x return for ECI 9, a 2008-vintage £437 million (€589 million; $665 million) vehicle, on the sale of machine-to-machine network Wireless Logic to CVC Capital Partners. Financial details of the transaction were undisclosed.

“ECI's recent transactions demonstrate that there continue to be exciting growth opportunities within the UK market and these new appointments add to the strength and depth of the ECI platform as we look to deploy our latest fund, ECI 10,” ECI managing partner Sean Whelan said in the statement.