Wrotham Partners is a boutique capital advisory firm in London. We help Western businesses raise growth equity, private capital and debt from family offices, private investors and other capital allocators in the Gulf. For people early in their careers, that makes for a particular kind of working life. This note describes it plainly, along with the commitments we make to anyone who applies to us and the checks we encourage every candidate to make.
The work itself. Our services are equity advisory, debt advisory, sell-side advisory, buy-side advisory, placement agent services and Gulf capital advisory. In practice, a raise involves understanding a business in detail, building a financial model that holds up under questioning, preparing materials that explain the opportunity clearly, and identifying which investors are likely to be a good fit. It then involves supporting the conversations, due diligence and documentation that follow. Sell-side and buy-side work adds the analysis of companies and buyers. Each mandate draws on the same core skills: careful numbers, clear writing and sound judgement about what an investor will want to know.
We will never charge a candidate a fee of any kind.
Live mandates from the start. We take on a small number of mandates at a time, so there is little work that sits on a shelf. Early-career people work on live transactions, and their models and materials go in front of real investors. Research on Gulf investors shapes which ones a client meets. A recent example of the kind of work involved is our role advising CDN Homes, a London residential property operator, on an AED 40 million growth capital raise from family offices in Riyadh and across the Gulf, as exclusive placement agent and financial adviser.
Direct work with senior people. Senior people lead every mandate, and the team is compact. Our associate, Olu Ayodeji, and our analysts, Zayd Al Faris and Sade Stuart, work alongside our Founding Partners, Ali Govani and Dylan Opara, our Director, Edward Connolly, and our Vice President, Jeremy Finch, and with Hasan Al Karim, our Head of GCC Coverage, on the investor side. The firm is also supported by a Board of Advisors. The standard is high, because the work goes to clients and investors. In return, you see at close range how experienced advisers handle judgement calls that no textbook covers.
Learning from a long record. Across their careers, including at prior firms, our team has raised more than US$2.3 billion across 34 transactions. That experience is available to anyone who asks good questions. Much of what matters in this work, such as how to present a weakness honestly, how to read an investor's silence or when to slow a process down, is learned by watching it done and then doing it with someone experienced alongside you.
Based in London. Roles are in London, where the firm has its only office. We cover the Gulf through travel and relationships, so the work involves investors in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha and Kuwait. We do not have an office in the Gulf, and we will not suggest that a role is based there. Anyone who offers you a position in a Wrotham Partners Gulf office is not acting for us.
Honest expectations. The work is demanding and its pace follows the transaction, which is not always predictable. A small firm also means fewer layers between you and the people making decisions, and more of your work is visible to them. That suits people who like responsibility early, who check their own work before anyone else does, and who are comfortable being asked to explain their numbers. It suits less well someone looking for a fixed routine.
Our commitments to candidates. Recruitment is a common route for fraud, and fraudsters regularly borrow the names of real firms. We want candidates to know exactly what to expect from us. We will never charge a candidate a fee of any kind, whether for an application, training, equipment, a visa or checks. We will never ask for your passwords or for access to your bank, email or any other account. We will only contact you from an @wrothampartners.com email address. Our only official social profile is our LinkedIn company page. You are welcome to take time to check who you are dealing with at any stage, and we encourage it.
What genuine recruitment looks like. Across professional firms generally, a real hiring process has a recognisable shape. You speak to people whose names you can find on the firm's own website. Conversations take place by email from the firm's domain, by video call or in person, and rarely by text message alone. Offers are made in writing. Employers carry the cost of any checks they need. Bank details are collected for payroll only after an offer has been accepted, through the employer's own systems. A process that skips these features, or compresses them into a single afternoon, deserves a second look.
A worked warning sign. Consider, as a hypothetical, a graduate who receives a message on a messaging app from someone using the name of one of our team. The sender offers an analyst role after a short exchange of texts, sends an offer letter carrying our logo, and asks the graduate to buy a laptop from a named supplier, with a promise of reimbursement, and to send a passport scan and bank details. Every part of that sequence breaks one of the commitments above. The approach is not from us, however convincing the logo or the name.
If something does not fit. If you are approached about a role with us through a messaging app, a social network other than our LinkedIn page or a personal email address, or are asked to pay or to share account access, the approach is not from us. Do not respond or send documents. Find our website at wrothampartners.com yourself and contact us at contact@wrothampartners.com so we can confirm. Do not use any link, address or telephone number supplied in the message.
If you have already shared information. If you have shared bank details or paid money to someone using our name, contact your bank immediately, since speed improves the chance of stopping a payment. Report it to the police or your national fraud reporting service, and keep the messages as evidence. If you have sent identity documents, tell your bank and consider the protective services available through your national fraud prevention bodies. Then let us know, so that we can warn others.
Any job that asks you to receive money into your own account and pass it on should be refused outright. Those schemes use candidates to move the proceeds of other frauds, and the consequences fall on the account holder.
We would always rather a candidate checked with us than took a risk, and we will never mind being asked.
This commentary is provided for general information and reflects the views of Wrotham Partners at the time of writing. It does not constitute investment, legal or financial advice.