In 2003, Risk Capital Partners funded the public-to-private of Signature Restaurants, the owner of a number of leading London restaurants including The Ivy and Le Caprice. During our investment, management also founded the fast growing wood fired pizza brand, Strada.

We sold our investment in September 2005 realising a 7.7x return on equity.

Why we invested:

• Shares were undervalued on AIM
• Opportunity to start up the Strada brand using the strong cash flow from the existing estate and our experience with PizzaExpress

How we helped:

• Giving management the confidence to start up the Strada business
• Contributing relevant experience of working with other fast growing restaurant chains
• Operational benchmarking and productivity improvements