Cakesmiths is an independent manufacturer and supplier of artisan handmade cakes. Based in Bristol, it supplies its range to customers across the UK through its direct-to-market online platform and through direct relationships with independent coffee shops.

The business caters to a wide range of palates, including a broad vegan and very-low gluten range, and prides itself on exciting innovation and limited edition ‘small batch’ runs.

Cakesmiths also uses industry-leading reusable and recyclable packaging to keep its products fresh when being distributed to its customers.

DSP is a specialist database, cloud and applications managed service provider. 

The business manages high performance database and IT infrastructure with market leading expertise and capabilities in Oracle, SQL Server and Multi-Cloud technologies.

As one of Oracle’s leading European Partners, DSP provides its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, technology and applications expertise to customers in a wide range of sectors, including financial and professional services, transport, healthcare, education and the public sector.

Supporting international expansion

LDC invested in DSP in October 2023 to enhance its product and services capability, both in the UK and new international markets, with its acquisitive growth strategy targeting expansion into North America and Europe.

Within the first month of partnering with LDC, DSP acquired Canada-based Eclipsys Solutions, to grow its Oracle Cloud services offering and expand its geographical presence in North America.

Headquartered in Bristol, A-Gas is the world leader in the supply and lifecycle management of refrigerants and associated products and services.

For over 30 years, A-Gas has supported its clients and partners on their environmental journey by supplying lower global warming gases and actively increasing the circularity of the industries it serves.

The company’s proprietary gas separation and recovery technology effectively abated approximately 8 million metric tonnes of CO2e in 2022, the equivalent to removing over 1.6 million cars from the roads for a year.

Significant investment

The management team led a £70m secondary buyout with LDC in 2011 as it looked to accelerate its international buy and build strategy.

During our partnership, LDC provided an additional £30m of follow-on funding as the management team identified six targets that helped expand A-Gas’ geographic footprint and service capabilities across international markets.

By 2016, A-Gas had expanded to 16 sites across Europe, Australia, South Africa and North America, providing full end-to-end management for its global customer base.

Evolution Funding (Evolution) is a technology-led motor finance platform that connects car dealers and auto finance providers with multiple lenders.

Since it was founded in 2002, the business has grown to become the largest online auto finance marketplace in the UK with its funding platform widely embedded across UK automotive dealerships.

It employs almost 500 people and supports over 4,000 dealer forecourts, including national car dealerships such as Marshall, Sytner Group and Trust Ford and major online-only used car dealers such as Cinch and Cazoo.

It also has brand partnerships with the AA and fintech services like Experian and ClearScore, which offer access to direct-to-consumer channels.

Boston Energy employs and trains specialist technicians to support the build and maintenance programmes of onshore and offshore wind farms across the globe.

Boston Energy’s client base includes the world’s biggest OEMs and Wind Farm Operators. It was recently awarded a significant new contract to support the Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the North Sea, the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Since 2012, Boston Energy technicians have supported over 10,000 wind turbines across four countries.

Targeting global growth

LDC invested in the business in 2023 backing Julian Cattermole and the management team to take advantage of opportunities to grow in all of its core markets globally to support the transition to a clean energy economy.

Mark Parkes, who founded Bostonair Group in 1997, remains involved in the business as a major shareholder and Non-Executive Director.

Embedding ESG

In 2025, Boston Energy set out its ESG strategy, defining a Net‑Zero‑focused vision under three pillars – ‘Recruit, Retain and Reduce’, guiding its progress across the wind energy sector, employees and society. In the same year it earned a Bronze Medal from EcoVadis, placing it in the top 35% of organisations globally for sustainability performance. Boston Energy’s inaugural ESG report outlines these commitments, marking a major step in embedding ESG at the heart of its operations.

Star Live is a specialist production agency that delivers live event and specialist build solutions.

Star Live has delivered major projects at events, including specialist project management solutions and delivery of temporary and permanent buildings for prestigious sporting events, including The Championships at Wimbledon, the Ryder Cup and multiple Commonwealth and Olympic Games, the world’s biggest festivals, concerts and tours, for artists including Adele, Maroon 5, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Oasis and global brand activations for brands including Tik Tok, Airbnb, Disney Pixar, Jaguar and Neon at Battersea.  It was also responsible for the stage, Royal Box VIP seating and Royal retiring room at the VE80 Celebration Concert in 2025.

Setting the stage for future growth 

Led by CEO Grahame Muir and COO Simon Broyd, Star Live has grown into a business that is synonymous with world-famous events.

LDC invested in the business in 2023 and will support Grahame, Simon and the existing management team as they embark on the next stage of their ambitious growth journey.

This includes further overseas expansion as well as investing in its people, brand, facilities and inventory of equipment.

The Barrister Group (TBG), a tech-enabled legal services company, is the umbrella group for well-known legal brands including Clerksroom Chambers and Clerksroom Direct.

Co-founded by Harry Hodgkin and Stephen Ward, TBG uses innovative software to give barristers choice over their working patterns and offers flexibility to practitioners by enabling them to operate on a remote basis without the need for a physical chambers.

Bringing the Bar into the 21^st century

LDC invested in the business in May 2023, backing Harry and Stephen, alongside their management team, to support the growth of the business.

With LDC’s investment and support, TBG will look to attract more barristers and instructions with its alternative chambers model, whilst supporting existing members and investing further in its proprietary technology.

Idwal Marine Services is Cardiff-based leading provider of tech-enabled inspection services to the global commercial shipping sector.

Its services which include vessel condition and integrity inspection services, fleet monitoring and data services – are relied upon by ship owners and operators, brokers, flag states, investors and other financial stakeholders.

Its Idwal Grade® asset condition rating, which enables sector benchmarking, has become a recognised standard in the industry,

The business, a certified carbon neutral organisation, was the first in its industry to include both decarbonisation metrics and crew welfare and working condition data in their reports.

Navigating overseas expansion

LDC made a significant investment in the company, led by CEO Nick Owens, to support the development of its proprietary technology platform, data and services, as well as expanding its network of overseas offices, which already includes China, Greece and Japan.

As part of the investment, Gehan Talwatte, an experienced chairman of several high-growth, private equity backed companies in the data services sector, became Non-Executive Chairman. Simon Morse, an experienced senior shipping executive with extensive marine services and private equity board expertise, was also appointed Non-Executive Director to further support the management team on their journey.

In August 2023, Idwal expanded into Asia setting up a regional HQ in Singapore. The business will now have on-the-ground expertise to provide unmatched service levels of vessel inspection and grading services to Asian owners and operators.

Headquartered in Reading, FSP is an award-winning provider of Digital Transformation services to large enterprises and public sector organisations. Its portfolio of digital strategy and change, business productivity, cloud engineering, data & artificial intelligence and cyber offerings are transforming high-profile clients across a range of sectors.

Supporting organic growth

In December 2020, FSP secured a multi-million-pound minority investment to support the company’s bold growth strategy, enabling it to expand its client base and suite of digital services. It also introduced former BBC and Microsoft executive Sharon Baylay-Bell as a Non-Executive Director, to support FSP’s existing management team, led by Simon Grosse (Chief Executive Officer), Simon Walker (Chief Customer Officer), and Tim Ebenezer (Chief Digital Officer).

Since LDC invested in the business, FSP has more than doubled revenues and headcount whilst being recognised for its people-centric approach in a number of awards programmes, including placing first in three separate Great Place to Work UK® Best Workplaces™ league tables across tech, the mid-market and South East-based business. The management team also collected the Management Team of the Year award at the Thames Valley Deal Awards in 2021.

Continuing support

In February 2023, LDC exited its investment to CBPE, whilst reinvesting for a minority stake to continue to support the growth of the business.

The transaction enabled FSP’s simultaneous acquisition of leading cyber security consultancy Savanti, strengthening its capabilities in cyber services to its growing portfolio of customers.

Both businesses grew by 50% in their most recent trading year. The combined business will employ over 250 digital transformation and cyber specialists.

With an expanded investor base, FSP plans to continue investing in its suite of services as well as making further strategic acquisitions to accelerate its scale and customer base.

In 2024, FSP was ranked fourth in the Megabuyte50 and took home the Best Performing IT Consulting Company Award at the Megabuyte100 Awards. The judges noted FSP’s heritage in the Microsoft ecosystem, strong advisory capability and competency in areas including cloud and data engineering.

In 2025, FSP acquired Stratia Cyber, a provider of consultancy cyber security services, to further enhance their ability to deliver end-to-end cyber protection and defence for clients and specialist data firm Intuita Consulting, which will boost its data and AI offering. 

Based in Merseyside, Horsefly is a leading artificial intelligence-based talent analytics platform.

It enables HR-decision making at international organisations including Coca Cola, EDF Energy, Manpower, Indeed, Jaguar Land Rover, The UK Home Office and Virgin Media.

Horsefly’s subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform gathers and aggregates granular, real-time data on labour markets from 60 countries, creating insight into business-critical issues such as global talent sourcing, onboarding, diversity and inclusion, rewards and benefit benchmarking, and workforce development and planning.

Driving organic and international growth 

LDC is backing Founder and CEO, Will Crandle, to continue to grow the business organically, in the UK and internationally, in a way that reinforces Horsefly’s people-focused culture.

As part of the transaction, David Gilbertson who is an experienced non-executive director in the business intelligence sector, joins the board as Chair.

Stonbury is a leading UK water and environmental sustainability specialist.

The national business, headquartered in Bedfordshire, has a 40-year heritage of working with UK water companies and environment agencies to deliver innovative, low-carbon solutions to maintain, repair and refurbish their critical assets, from drinking water provision to wastewater treatment, helping to protect supplies and extend asset lives.

The company also delivers nature-based solutions to help customers operate more sustainably and mitigate the impacts of climate change. These range from restoring rivers to increase their capacity to retain water and boost biodiversity, to implementing natural flood management programmes that include artificial wetland creation and river channel works.

Building future-focused solutions

In December 2022, LDC completed a significant investment in Stonbury to continue to grow the business through expanding its range of water, wastewater and nature-based, low-carbon environmental services, through organic growth and acquisitions. LDC is also helping the business to further expand into clean energy solutions.

In November 2025, Stonbury announced the appointment of Colin Perry-Davis as CEO, replacing Trevor Hoyle who led the business since July 2021. Trevor will continue as a Non-Executive Director.

Etrading Software designs, builds and operates highly specialised technology solutions for global capital markets. The company, founded in 2004 and headquartered in London, specialises in providing the market and reference data used by international financial institutions.

A partnership to deliver global growth

LDC backed the management team, led by CEO Sassan Danesh, in 2022. Partnering with LDC was Sassan’s first experience of private equity and the investment helped to secure the capital needed for the business to grow internationally, targeting a highly specialised growth market.

Expanding products and services

Working closely with LDC, the management team has grown the company’s range of technology-enabled services and expanded its data service offering within Europe and the US. This gives the business a strong platform for growth, as the market for its services in other overseas territories continues to develop.

Etrading Software has partnered with US company Coefficient Markets to provide a fully electronic execution system to the corporate loans market. LDC has also helped the management team to build organisational systems and controls, resulting in a more objective, data-driven view of the business.