The festive period is upon us, which means it’s time for our final newsletter of the year. It has been a busy few months here at Souter Investments, with lots of activity across new deals, our portfolio and our growing team.
As we set our sights on new opportunities in 2026, here’s a quick catch-up on our activity since the summer.
McAvoy: Backing a leader in modular infrastructure
Our partnership with independent sponsor Duke Street is now nearly 15 years young. In October, we participated in our seventh deal with the firm, backing its acquisition of McAvoy, a provider of high-quality modular buildings and social infrastructure.
McAvoy designs, builds, and rents premium space solutions, ranging from temporary modular buildings to fully bespoke permanent buildings. The company has extensive experience in supplying the health, education, pharmaceutical, and commercial sectors. It specialises in complex solutions such as clean and sterile rooms that include operating theatres, modular classrooms and nurseries, as well as digital laboratories.
McAvoy holds a leading position in the modular rental and sales industry with premium-quality, flexible and cost-effective buildings that are easy to deploy. This combination, as well as the market’s rising demand, stood out to us as an attractive prospect. We’re looking forward to seeing our investment boost the size and quality of McAvoy’s rental fleet, while working with an innovative and highly motivated management team.
Octavius: Scaling infrastructure excellence across the UK
In November, we exited from Octavius Infrastructure, a specialist transport infrastructure and civil engineering business focused on the UK’s rail and road networks.
Based in Surrey, Octavius is a key delivery partner to public bodies such as Network Rail, National Highways, and Transport for London.
As part of a Sullivan Street-led syndicate, we participated in the buyout of Octavius back in 2021. Since then, we’ve seen the company scale nationally, continuing to deliver strong results year-on-year and growing more than 50% under the syndicate’s ownership.
The Octavius and Sullivan Street teams have much to be proud of, together building a fantastic business as well as delivering a great return for investors. We wish John Dowsett and his team well and are sure they’ll continue to thrive under new ownership.
As with many of our deal-by-deal independent sponsors, our relationship with Sullivan Street is enduring, with six deals completed over five years.
Fresh faces and perspectives: Meet our new colleagues
You may already have spoken to Chris McFadden or Holly Wilkie, or even met them in recent weeks, but for those who didn’t know, we are delighted to welcome them to our team.
Chris joined us in November as an Investment Executive from PwC, where he was most recently a Senior Manager in Transaction Services, having also spent time on secondment with Shell.
A few weeks earlier, Holly Wilkie arrived as an Investment Analyst, coming from her previous role in corporate finance advisory with BDO and having qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2022.
And with Chris’ and Holly’s arrival, we also bid farewell to Rhea Ghosal after nearly five years with us, first as an Investment Analyst and then Manager. Rhea is now off on a South American travel adventure before she begins new pursuits in London later next year. We want to extend a huge thank you to Rhea for all her work with us, and we wish her all the best for this next chapter.
Investment Review: Insights and stories from a transformative period
Our latest Investment Review was published in October and gave us the opportunity to reflect on the last three years across our own business, our portfolio companies, and the market in general.
The review covers areas such as our deal and portfolio activity since 2022, as well as the growing strength within our own team and the value derived from our backing of high-quality independent sponsors and management teams, with a number of case studies included to illustrate our approach.
Sir Brian wrote about the ways three key partnerships have shaped his life and career, as well as the productive balance found between his appetite for risk and our team’s rigorous but commercial approach. He also highlighted the impact our returns have had on the work carried out by the Souter Charitable Trust, which supports projects in the UK and overseas engaged in the relief of human suffering.
You can access the Investment Review here. Printed copies – which can be autographed by members of our team on request – are also available if you prefer one in hand to peruse by the fire over the Christmas break.
