Enra Specialist Finance

Enra Specialist Finance to be acquired




Elliott Advisors (UK) has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Enra Specialist Finance for an undisclosed sum, subject to FCA approval.

Elliott is purchasing the stake from management and Exponent Private Equity, which has owned Enra for five years and is now exiting its ownership position completely.

Several global investment companies were said to have been competing to acquire the business.

Amit Sharma and Richard Monahan from Elliott will join Enra’s board.

Danny Waters, founder and CEO of Enra (pictured above), said that Elliott’s desire to acquire the company was a great validation of the business and a vote of confidence in the strength of its future plans.

“In Elliott, we have found a partner that has deep experience in the UK mortgage market and the ambition to support our continuing growth as a leading specialist lending business in the UK. 

“This will be Enra’s third private equity transaction in the past 10 years and our continuing success has been made possible through the hard work of the team.

“2021 was a record year for Enra in terms of gross lending and overall financial performance and, in the past 18 months, we have upsized our warehouse funding capacity, issued our second securitisation, and  now sourced a new equity partner to support the business for years to come. 

“This puts Enra in a fantastic position to further develop its lending and broking businesses. 

“I would like to thank Exponent for its support over the last few years, and I look forward very much to leading the business to further success in partnership with the Elliott team.”

Mark Taylor, partner at Exponent Private Equity, commented: “It has been a privilege to partner with Danny and his team.

Since we backed Enra in 2017, the business has grown into a leading non-bank mortgage lender in the UK, underpinned by its best-in-class distribution, credit performance and growth. 

“We are delighted with the outcome and are confident Enra will continue to thrive with Elliott Advisors’ backing.”

Richard added: “Enra is a stand-out performer in a crowded marketplace with the size, experience, funding capacity, and leadership to deliver continuing success. 

“In the past five years, we have seen Enra expand rapidly from bridging loans into development finance, second-charge lending and, most recently, specialist BTL, and we recognise a business that has the capacity to deliver further significant growth at attractive levels of risk-adjusted return. 

“Danny has built a business that is able to write tightly controlled credit risk at attractive margins across several different products to deliver significant profit growth; taken together, this represents an extremely compelling investment case. 

“We look forward to working with Danny and the Enra team in the coming years to support the continued growth of the business."

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