Investment Strategy

Emason Finance will review your funding requirements, to identify a need for initial seed capital  or indeed  longer term more traditional senior debt. We will review and propose financing solutions for large integrated resort destinations to smaller commercial projects such as a Leisure centre. Investment can be secured from global funding partners-from the larger players in the market to the niche operators specialising in a particular sector. Both debt and equity solutions are considered for projects, which offer the correct mix of risk, reward and which are underpinned with optimum security.

Emason Finance’s investment strategy has been developed specifically in recognition of the wide-ranging nature of the opportunities presented in Africa, and the peculiar challenges to private equity investing that the region presents. Emason Finance has a preference for sectors with high-growth, regulatory liberalisation, decreasing parasital activity and minimal requirements for daily operational contacts with government agencies and businesses with high operating leverage, simple and repeatable processes and a high degree of control over the value chain.

While we have a bias towards small-to-medium transactions, a key precept of Emason Finance’s investment approach is to maintain suppleness with regard to transaction structure. Our funds seek to invest £2.5 to £100 million of equity in individual transactions, including:

We believe that broad-based wealth creation is the most powerful means to achieving lasting social and economic development in Africa and that the mobilisation of capital and the building of management capacity are the keys to achieving broad-based wealth creation. The mobilisation of significant amounts of capital depends simply on the demonstration that attractive risk-adjusted returns are to be earned.

As such, Emason Finance’s view is that, in Africa, more than elsewhere, generating attractive risk-adjusted returns and investing for the social good go hand-in-hand and we intend to demonstrate this in the performance of the funds we investment in.

Investing in growth creates fulfilling and well-compensated employment opportunities;

Investing in “infrastructural sectors”, such as telecommunications, transportation, power and housing improves access, increases efficiency and lowers the cost of everyday goods and services;

Investing in financial services promotes domestic capital formation and opens paths to wealth accumulation;

We aim to do this while maintaining the highest ethical standards and driving the same within our portfolio companies.

Notwithstanding the above, we believe that access to quality education and basic healthcare are particularly indispensable. We recognise that there are limits to the ability of private sector-led for-profit investments to provide these developmentally-critical services.

In recognition of this, Emason Finance, will each year contribute to non-profit groups and programs in Africa that demonstrate particular efficacy in improving access to education and healthcare for the underprivileged.

We favour those programs in which the commitment of the sponsors is demonstrable, where the project in question has the potential to be self-sustaining, and where results are measurable private equity transactions, Emason Finance either acts as a principal investor or invests as partner in a syndicated investment alongside its clients.

Emason Finance specialises in identifying investment and buy-out opportunities in start-ups as well as SMEs