Private Equity Professionals

Former head of Saatchinvest joins Inflexion

Two appointments at Inflexion, including the hire of former Saatchinvest chief Andrew Leek, take the mid-market firm’s number of new investment team recruits to five in the last six months. The firm believes a larger team will quicken its deal-making process.

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Andrew Lee, the former head of Saatchinvest, has joined UK mid-market player Inflexion Private Equity as assistant director. Leek left Alchemy Partners in 2002 to head up the Saatchi brothers’ brand acquisition venture.

Andrew Lee

Clara Chen also joins Inflexion as an investment executive, while Christian Hamilton and Catherine Richards have both been promoted to investment director. 

Tim Smallbone, who joined Inflexion’s Manchester office in 2004, has been promoted to partner.

Gareth Healey, investment director at Inflexion, told PEO that with a larger team, the private equity firm can execute deals more quickly.

“We are deliberately over-manned so we can focus on speed of execution. In one recent process, we were outbid by a trade buyer, only to be allowed back into the process at a later stage because we could move quickly,” Healy said. “In an environment where deals are taking longer to execute, speed is very important.”

Inflexion is currently investing its £165 million (€208 million; $325 million) 2006 buyout fund. It typically targets deals of between £10 million and £100 million and its most recent investment was the MBO of UK-based manufacturer of submarine vehicles SMD in April of this year.