GCP announces third senior appointment in sixth months

GCP, the provider of blended equity and debt to the UK’s small to medium sized businesses, has announced the appointment of Richard Shaw as investment manager. Richard, who joins from Clearwater Corporate Finance, provides additional transactional resource as GCP begins to deploy its recently raised £160m Fund III. This is GCP’s third appointment in six months.

Bill Crossan, managing Partner of GCP commented: “Richard joins us at an exciting time for our business and he brings much experience of sourcing and transacting deals. Richard will be a real asset to our business and we are delighted to have him on board helping us to invest our fund.

“We have significant capital to deploy and are looking to invest in UK SMEs that continue to be the engine room of the economy. Our flexible equity and debt structures have always represented a most appropriate way to fund UK businesses but perhaps never more so than now.”

Richard’s appointment follows those of Kirsty McDonald who recently joined as investment director from 3i, and Alexander Thomson who joined from Investec Bank, as investment manager.

Richard commented: “I’ve always admired GCP’s single source offering as, not only is it better for a business, their process is more efficient than others in the market where there may be separate equity and debt providers with different requirements. I am really looking forward to joining the team and working on deals from an investment perspective.

Richard has worked on a range of transactions including management buyouts, development capital, company disposals and acquisitions. Richard was recognised as a Mergermarket Young Dealmaker of the Year in 2011.

Prior to this Richard worked at Grant Thornton Corporate Finance in Manchester, where he also undertook a secondment to Lloyds Banking Group Business Support Unit and was involved in managing a portfolio of over 60 customers, assisting the bank with a number of transactions including accelerated disposals and debt for equity deals. Richard is a Chartered Accountant having started his career with Robson Rhodes in London, spending 3 years in their Corporate Recovery team.

He graduated from the University of Warwick in 2002 with an honours degree in Accounting and Finance.