MVision sets up shop in Sydney(2)

Placement and advisory firm MVision Private Equity Advisers has opened a new office in Sydney. 

It is the firm’s fourth office globally, adding to its existing offices in London, New York and Hong Kong. 

The combined headcount of its Asian offices, which is expected to change as the group restructures its operations, stands at around eight to 10 people. Managing director Nikki Brown, who joined the firm in 2001, will be in charge of running the firm’s Australian operations.   

The move will allow the firm to better serve its existing client base, according to chief executive Mounir Guen. “We have outstanding clients and investor relations in Australia, and we can now service them within their time zone. We need to be in a location where there is a high flow of movement of activity,” he said. 

MVision has opened  a new Sydney office

Australia has a very concentrated and sophisticated private equity market, as well as an established ecosystem of infrastructure, real estate and natural resources funds, he explained. Being closer to them, he said, would allow the firm to develop existing GP relationships and forge new ones. 

“London is very central: you can pretty much day-trip to any place in Europe. From New York you can day trip to anywhere East Coast, and you can day-trip to most of Asia Pacific from Hong Kong. The only place where you can’t day-trip to from Hong-Kong is Australia.”

Setting up shop in Sydney will bring the firm closer to the country’s rich network of LPs too, Guen argued. All the global funds the firm had helped raised in the past, he said, have counted Australian investors in them. 

He dismissed suggestions that fundraising activity in the region had recently hit a sticky patch, saying that was only the result of normal, cyclical variations. “I don’t look at the success of alternatives through how much capital is raised in a particular year, because I find it very dependent on what general partners have on offer. I look at it in terms of the opportunity. And the opportunity is there, the experience is starting to be prevalent.” 

He pointed to the firm’s recent placement successes, which include funds from CHAMP Ventures and other vehicles he declined to disclose. 

Last December Private Equity International reported that the firm acted as a placement agent to Equis Funds Group’s maiden vehicle, which closed above target on $647 million.