Adam Crinion

BGF is the UK and Irelands most active growth investor, backing ambitious businesses with minority investment to help them scale on their own terms. Since 2011, we have invested more than £5bn in 650+ businesses across every region and sector. Today, with more than £3.5bn in assets under management, we continue to support a range of growing companies across early-stage and growth-stage. Through our 15 offices across the UK and Ireland, were close to the businesses we back, combining local insight with national scale to build trusted partnerships with entrepreneurs and management teams. Beyond investment, our portfolio companies benefit from the expertise of our 200+ strong team, as well as dedicated value creation support spanning talent, operational expertise and our Scale community – including a network of more than 8000+ experienced business leaders, sector specialists and board-level non-executives. Learn more: BGF UK: https://www.bgf.co.uk BGF Ireland: https://www.bgfireland.ie/

Waterland is an independent private equity investment group that supports entrepreneurs in realizing their growth ambitions. With substantial financial resources and committed industry expertise, Waterland enables its portfolio companies to achieve accelerated growth both organically and through acquisitions. Waterland is an active investor in the financial, strategic and operational sense. In the current dynamic business environment with an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, Waterland is a partner that provides entrepreneurs with a powerful position in the increasingly competitive international arena. Since the start in 1999, the firm has made investments in more than 1100 companies. Waterland currently manages more than €14 billion of investor commitments. Investments are made in markets with attractive characteristics for a consolidation strategy: consistent growth, sufficient size, sustainable profitability, fragmentation and (indication of) consolidation. Waterland focusses on industries that are undergoing change as a consequence of one or more of the following trends: sustainability, digitalization and outsourcing, ageing population, and leisure and wellbeing. Waterland employs 200+ professionals. Our teams are based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Norway and Denmark and operate across Europe.

Melior Equity Partners (“Melior”) is a leading Irish private equity investment firm headquartered in Dublin with a strong track record of investing in small to medium sized private businesses in Ireland. Melior was founded in 2019 by Jonathan Cosgrave and Peter Garvey who previously co-headed the management of a €292 million Irish focused fund (“CCI”) for The Carlyle Group (“Carlyle”). The Melior team members invested the CCI fund from 2014 to 2019 and are one of the most experienced private equity investment teams in the Irish market. Melior combines best-in-class international standards and far reaching networks developed at leading global investment firms, with a deep knowledge of the local marketplace to bring a unique approach to investing and partnering with management teams in Ireland. The Melior team are currently deploying capital out of Melior Equity Partners II, a fund which is backed by leading international and local sovereign wealth funds, fund of funds, foundations, financial institutions and family office investors. The breadth and nature of our investors provide us with significant capacity to fund transactions of any scale in the Irish market.

Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with deep industry expertise that deploys private capital across three business segments: Global Private Equity, Global Credit, and Carlyle AlpInvest. With $477 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2025, Carlyle’s purpose is to connect people, ideas, and capital to fuel growth for companies and performance for investors. Carlyle employs more than 2,500 people in 27 offices across four continents. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security or product of Carlyle or any Carlyle-managed fund. Additional notices & disclaimers can be found here: https://www.carlyle.com/notices-and-disclaimers

We raised our first institutional fund of £110 million in 2015. We partner with growing niche businesses in the UK and Europe in the lower mid market. In practice this means investing £5 to £15 million in companies making between £2 and £7 million across all sectors. Prior to raising our fund we invested in 7 businesses on a deal by deal basis, some of which we continue to work with. We are a hands on private equity house and aim to be true business partners. We do not charge arrangement or monitoring or NED fees, and are wholly incentivised to grow profits and equity value. This means we are totally aligned with management teams and other shareholders. We are growth facilitators, investing in and supporting our companies as much as possible. We sit on our companies board with management teams to help shape and refine company strategies. Ultimately we back people, and their teams. The day to day management of businesses will always stay with the team, but ensure we are always available to help, listen and advise where possible. The idea behind the firm was to take the skills learnt over many years working in larger organisations and to apply them to the smaller end of the mid-market. A key principal has always been to have professionalism, experience and integrity at the heart of everything we do, and we pride ourselves on our reputation for being honest and straightforward. We have always focused on the lower mid market. Growth is at the heart of everything we do, and we look to continue investing in our businesses where appropriate. We have assisted companies in executing buy and builds, internationalisation, building out sales functions and many other organic growth strategies in a variety of sectors. We pride ourselves on our fluid approach to investing, and approach every deal with a blank piece of paper. Every business is different and every set of vendors have different requirements, we tailor our approach accordingly.