It is with great pleasure that I write to you with the inaugural Laeceum Year End Review.
In all fairness, I am probably one year late with this given that Laeceum existed albeit in embryonic form well before incorporation in January this year. However, I won’t dwell on that necessarily introspective and administrative period.
Whilst many of us have become habitually accustomed to brevity bordering on curtness in our daily correspondence, this short letter may meander, duck and dive much in the same way that Laeceum has in its first calendar year of operation.
So, following incorporation on 23 January 2018, we hit the ground running with our first advisory mandate. Working for a publicity-shy multibillion-dollar single family office, we were asked to find a small retail deposit taking institution in Europe. Our long-listing was extensive and we deftly unearthed numerous viable off-market prospects in Austria, Germany and the UK. This led to a carefully filtered short-list and a series of intensive management meetings with the most attractive prospects in the UK and Austria where our work remains ongoing.
Shortly thereafter, we were then selected by the Global Head of Distribution of a global asset manager based in London to deliver our first consultancy engagement. Over a period of weeks, we undertook a focused body of research and analysis to test a hypothesis in support of a potential GBP 500m acquisition.
Through the Summer, the team hunkered down into execution mode. With Autumn fast approaching and the onboarding of a true expert in all things SME related, the Laeceum SME proposition was rapidly taking shape behind the scenes; more on that shortly.
In early Autumn, we were presented with a unique opportunity to find a new home for a management team that have collectively built a leading and profitable data & analytics business over several decades. With interest in this segment reaching fever pitch, we expect to be working day and night to get this over the line over during H1 2019, so the real work can begin on building what we believe will become a truly global big data business.
Now back to our SME story. Led by our SME guru, (who has notably advised various governments as well as pretty much every household name in the banking, telco and utility world on SMEs) we built a targeted SME proposition underpinned by a unique and proprietary data asset. Following numerous workshops, pilots and the suchlike, we hope to announce some very exciting wins early in the new year where our SME proposition will play an instrumental role in bringing a competitive edge to our clients’ involvement in the various components of the RBS Alternative Remedies Package.
With the year drawing to a close, we chanced across an aspirant entrepreneur with a very novel idea in the venture capital space. It’s an area fraught with regulatory complexity and massive execution risk but thanks to the very kind and generous guidance received by leading lights in top law firms, tax advisors and fund administrators, we are now working towards a viable structure with a view to sounding out the concept with Wealth Managers/Intermediaries and VC Funds in Q1 2019 as a precursor to raising £175,000 in a seed funding round during Q2/3 2019.
So, as you can see, it’s been an epic start to things. None of which would have been possible had it not been for the time, trust and confidence you have placed in us over the past months. We look forward to building on our relationship in 2019 and in the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year and see you soon!
Ravi Chauhan | Founder & MD
