Australia's Fortitude adds two partners
Australia-based Fortitude Investment Partners, formerly the growth capital investment business of listed alternatives manager Blue Sky, has promoted Bryan Brown and Sam O’Connor to partner.
They are founding members of the Fortitude team, having worked alongside the two existing partners, Nick Dignam and Nick Miller, at Blue Sky. Brown’s four-year stint at Blue Sky was preceded by transaction advisory roles at KPMG in the UK and Australia while O’Connor’s five-year tenure followed employment at PwC in a similar capacity.
At Fortitude, Brown focuses on consumer, food, and industrials opportunities while O’Connor specialises in healthcare, services, and technology.
The round of promotions – which also saw Peter Taylor elevated to investment manager – comes on the back of two strong exits in 2022. Fortitude offloaded Quality Foods & Beverages to Quadrant Private Equity-backed Superior Food Services and exited out-of-home digital advertising business Shopper to a division of Woolworths. The net multiples exceeded 2x and 7x, respectively.
The private equity firm also made a new investment last December in Aged Care Decisions, a technology-enabled aged and disability care placement services provider. It performs a similar function to A Place for Mom and Caring.com in the US and Care Sourcer and Lottie in the UK.
Fortitude, which claims more than AUD 250m (USD 174m) in funds under management, makes growth capital investments across Australia and New Zealand. It typically commits AUD 10m to AUD 50m per transaction. Shopper was the sixth exit out of 18 investments made to date, with distributions exceeding AUD 400m and an overall multiple of 2.5x.
The team spun out in 2019 after Blue Sky collapsed and went into administration. This came on the back of regulatory breaches regarding fees charged to wholesale private equity and real estate funds, but the institutional funds and mandates – including those under what is now the Fortitude team – were not impacted. Oaktree Capital restructured Blue Sky and holds a minority stake in Fortitude.
The Fortitude team has always raised capital on a deal-by-deal basis, with a 70-30 split between high net worth and institutional clients.
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