Invest Europe Leader Interviews: Colm Walsh, ICG Enterprise Trust

We believe that listed private equity will play a critical role in bridging that gap.

My name is Colin Walsh. I am um one of the portfolio managers of ICG Enterprise Trust. I have um been working on this vehicle for the last 15 years, including with its predecessor, manager, and I've been responsible for the evolution of our strategy over that time.

We're the UK's oldest listed private equity vehicle. um a track record we're very proud of and we invest in exclusively in buyouts. We invest exclusively in Europe and North America and we focus on investing in strategies and companies that deliver strong but importantly consistent and resilient returns and companies that have the ability to grow even through difficult economic environments. And that's a concept we call defensive growth. We believe very strongly in the power of listed private equity.

It's very difficult um for most investors to access the asset class and we provide a solution by offering a diversified portfolio for the price of a share listed on the London Stock Exchange, a member of the Footsie 250 index which therefore which people are able to trade bounded only by the constraints of the market and not by any gazing provisions or any other legal terms.

So it is the ultimate people often talk about the democratization of private equity and we believe that vehicles like ICG enterprise trust provide the ultimate in democratization by giving access literally for the price of a share.

What is the problem that listed private equity is there to solve? The way I see it is you have very sophisticated investors and they're increasingly allocating more to private equity. They see the power of the private equity model. They understand the consistency of the returns, the reduced volatility, and for them, especially investors with a long time horizon like sovereign wealth funds, like pension funds, that's a really attractive proposition.

On the other hand, you have retail shareholders, they're very under allocated to the asset class because it's typically seen as being difficult to access. It also allows investors to get access to the very best managers. We believe that listed private equity will play a critical role in bridging that gap by allowing retail shareholders with a very low minimum entry price to gain access to this increasingly attractive asset class which delivers consistent and strong returns through multiple different cycles.