Key differentiators

There are five things about the way we work at Duke Street which, when taken all together, make us really stand out from our competitors.

Origination

The way we go about identifying companies to invest in is different. We have a superb network of managers and industry advisers to help us find appropriate investments. Often we will be in contact with a management team for many years before their company is sold. By then we know each other very well and can move ahead with the investment and with transforming the business at a very rapid pace – more often than not without getting involved in an auction.

Buy and Build

We are very experienced in Buy and Build. That means we choose companies that, backed by our investment and guidance, can grow faster both through acquisition and organically.

Duke Street Triangle

Our operating partners - highly experienced industry specialists - are involved in the whole lifecycle of our investments from identification to execution, management and realisation. They’re integrated into our investment committee and strategy reviews. We build very strong relationships between our operating partners, Investment team and the CEOs of our portfolio companies. We call this integrated relationship the Duke Street Triangle.

It is built on open communication and clear lines of responsibility. Everyone knows where they stand.

Intensive resourcing

We provide our companies with intensive resourcing. We make sure our investment team is big enough and has the right skills to accelerate the growth of all our companies. We maintain a compact portfolio of investments to ensure each company gets the right level of resource.

Our style

We have an open and straightforward approach to doing business. That’s just our style - we make decisions fast and always try to be clear about our plans from the start. It’s a style that tends to appeal to the sort of CEOs we most want to work with. Like us, they are dynamic, straightforward, committed and ambitious.