Ely Place and Passion Capital Secondary Announcement

Passion Capital &
Ely Place
16 February 2021

Ely Place Partners announces its role in the closing of a tender offer secondary transaction to LPs of Passion Capital LP by funds managed by Wilshire Associates Inc.

You can visit Passion Capital’s website here, and Wilshire Associates’ website is here.

Passion Capital LP is a 2011 vintage early stage venture fund based in London. Its assets include GoCardless, the online direct debit payments company, which recently closed its latest funding round at close to a $1bn valuation.

The tender offer, at a small single digit discount to NAV, enabled Passion Capital to provide liquidity to its investors at a significant net multiple, while allowing Wilshire access to a strong portfolio of fast-growing technology assets.

Ely Place Partners acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Passion Capital, which was also supported by Osborne Clarke as legal counsel, on the transaction, running a competitive process to select the bidder.

“We are delighted to have closed this successful transaction for the Passion Capital team, to have found a liquidity solution for their investors, and to have helped create a great new partnership between Passion Capital and Wilshire,” says Daniel Roddick, founder of Ely Place Partners.

“Venture is a growing subset of the secondaries market. There are so many world class technology firms in Europe building significant enterprise value and this trend is providing a strong boost to VC funds, but not always their DPIs. We therefore expect to see many more of these types of transactions and are pleased with our track record.”

Robert Dighero, Partner at Passion Capital, commented:

“Ely Place Partners was instrumental in managing an extremely professional and efficient process for us. As our fund continues to perform strongly in its 10th year, we will be looking for even more opportunities to provide liquidity to our supportive LPs whilst optimising the outcome from our key value drivers.”

Martijn van Gils, Senior Associate at Wilshire commented:

“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Passion Capital in a secondary transaction involving a mature portfolio of assets with attractive growth prospects. The Passion Capital LP portfolio is an excellent complement to Wilshire’s investment activities in European venture capital.”