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Mansard Capital
Management is an
opportunistic investment
business seeking out strong
returns while limiting risk in
uncorrelated assets.

We offer asset management services as well as principal investment capital into strategic credit based opportunities, partnering with market leading experts to deliver our shareholders superior risk adjusted returns.

We deploy a dynamic investment strategy focused primarily on asset back credit opportunities and early stage investment funding, with the flexibility to invest across the capital structure. Our senior investment team averages 20+ years of experience, with a proven track record of investing in credit opportunities and special situations investing with varying risk/reward characteristics.

OFFERING

Asset
Management

Principle
Investment

Advisory
Services

ASSET MANAGEMENT

Mansard Capital Management is the investment manager for Mansard Capital SICAV plc. A fund range which currently consists of two asset backed lending funds, both underpinned by UK real estate.

Sellar Development Fund – Long term track record of providing innovative debt funding for early stage pre-planning mixed-use London based development opportunities.

Horizon Plus Fund – Strategic partnership with a UK FCA regulated mortgage lender, specialising in later life lending.

PRINCIPLE INVESTMENT

Well timed opportunistic capital, deployed to innovative and disruptive businesses.

Innovation

We invest in high growth revenue-generating, early-stage companies where the business leaders have clearly defined market knowledge and identified a market opportunity. This is by predominately investing in disruptive and innovative business models that are seeking to create new market sub sectors, that will eventually disrupt the existing market and displace established market leading firms, products or alliances.

Unconstrained

A diversified approach to investing in structured credit, unconstrained by investment type and allocating capital across high yielding, mid-market, structured, mezzanine and preferred equity transactions. The main objectives include capital preservation, relative liquidity and value enhancing rotation, and management of exits.

ADVISORY SERVICES

Mansard Capital Management works with a select number of family offices and institutions to structure tailored financial solutions focusing on credit opportunities, early-stage investment and provide working capital to businesses.

Our strategy seeks to deploy debt capital opportunistically, providing capital appreciation in specialty finance, structured equity, mezzanine, or even senior debt, giving our partners the ability to co-invest through their choice of financial instrument and structure.

When introducing credit portfolios to our partners, we balance their risk tolerance with their return objectives and liquidity requirements. Typically the most attractive opportunities arise at the beginning of a business cycle, but can also exit in the form of refinancing existing structures.

INVESTOR PORTAL

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PRESS

Diamond, in the Rough

Mansard Capital founder Leon Diamond was happily running global macro
and multi-asset strategies before a property opportunity caught his eye.

Mansard capital awarded 130m mandate

DFM Mansard Capital has been appointed a £130m mandate by Caerus Portfolio Management in the form of its four Dynamically Rebalanced Portfolio (DRP) funds.

Shard’s builders still thinking big in London

The father and son behind the creation of the tallest tower in London have linked up with a hedge fund to finance a new wave of development.

AJ Bell makes triple acquisition in bid to rival Hargreaves

Platform and Sipp provider AJ Bell has bought three companies in a bid to challenge Hargreaves Lansdown by launching its own asset management business.

CONTACT

If you would like to discuss potential solutions or
investment vehicles that may suit your needs, please
contact our investor relations team at ir@mansardcapital.com



Mansard Capital Management
2nd Floor, Airways House
High Street
Sliema
SLM 1549

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Tel: +44 (0)20 3026 3819

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ir@mansardcapital.com

Diamond, in the rough

THE VIEW OUT of Leon Diamond’s new office really is pretty damn good. Having just moved out of the Marble Arch Tower off Edgware Road, his hedge fund Mansard Capital has just taken up residence right outside London Bridge station, with the Shard and the News Building (otherwise known as the mini Shard) for company.

It’s almost spitting distance from the glass monolith, and positions his fund smack bang in one of the most up and coming areas of London right now.

There is a reason for the move, though – and it’s not the hidden rooftop café at the top of his new home. Mansard Capital has just unveiled a partnership with Sellar Developments, the property developers behind the iconic Shard, and has since moved into Sellar’s office to work side-by-side with the property visionaries.

So what exactly does the partnership entail? “We’ve set up a joint venture where we are the investment manager, and we look to appoint Sellar Developments as the development manager based on the opportunity,” Diamond says.

The partnership between the pair of companies has been two years in the making. “We saw there was an opportunity, not only in the UK but in the EU, where lots of banks are having to cut back on commercial property lending.

“It was our vision that to exploit the investment opportunity, we had to work with a property manager that was established and well regarded,” he adds.

Essentially, Sellar uses its considerable expertise as a property developer and goes out to scout out the properties – and Mansard provides the debt or equity finance. The focus is mainly London and the Southeast, as “London is one of the epicentres of attracting foreign money and foreign investors”.

The pair thrashed out details of the coupling, and started fundraising for the strategy. “We have £25m of committed capital, and what’s exciting for us is that we already have a deal pipeline that will make up around £300m,” Diamond says. The first deal they’re negotiating is a regeneration scheme in Canada Water, which should net investors anywhere between 12-15% annualised return on equity over four years. Impressive stuff.

The area of Canada Water subscribes to Sellar’s notion of rejuvenating an area as a whole – that a potential development area should be in a slightly down-at-heel part of London, which has the potential to become a real social and commercial hub. And Canada Water, equidistant from London Bridge and Canary Wharf, fits that criteria. They’re currently in discussions for their second deal, which is a large residential property in Camden.

Diamond has always been interested in property, ever since his days as a green applied science undergraduate in Brisbane. His family background is in development, too, which helped to stoke the initial fires of interest. However, his interest in financial services soon took over, and he found himself moving from Brisbane to Melbourne to work for one of the oldest stockbroking firms in the country. “It’s come full circle now,” he laughs. “I get to enjoy both sides of the spectrum – real markets, which I’ve always had a passion for, as well as seeing the tangible benefit of your work with the property fund.”

After several years working in Melbourne, he “had the itch to look at the world in more of a global view and move to London,” first becoming employed by Folkes Asset Management in Chelsea.

“Banks are cutting back on commercial property lending, and we saw an opportunity. London is one of the epicentres of attracting foreign money and foreign investors”

In true Antipodean style, he soon was off again, this time to New York, where he had his first foray into the hedge fund space, initially as an analyst and then as a principal trader at Porcupine Global Macro. It was a successful strategy – highly commended as one of the best global macro funds in the 2009 Hedge Funds Review European Performance Awards – and led to Diamond realising he could go it alone.

It was then back to London to set up his own strategy. Mansard Capital was set up in August 2010 with John Mortar – who was working at Wadhwani Asset Management at the time – who became the chief executive of the business. It was initially set up as a global macro fund, with Diamond the principal trader and the portfolio manager. The fund, which was seeded with around $10m from friends and family, meant Diamond was attempting to establish the business and trying to trade the markets both at the same time.

“They were troubled times,” he says. “We learned a lot of lessons – like being underfunded in terms of assets is a massive strain on the business. The first two years running Mansard was a very steep learning curve – understanding how to run a business as well as run a fund, which I underestimated going into it.”

After those initial choppy few years, Mansard now runs three successful strategies – the Sellar partnership, a global macro strategy and a multi-asset strategy – at an AUM of around $455m: and that’s in over just four years. While Mansard launched as a global macro fund, it’s been the multi-asset funds under the Mansard umbrella that have grown most substantially over the past 18 months.

It was founding Mansard that made Diamond realise that he could grab an opportunity in the market to “really break down the barriers of cutting out the middle man” and offering institutional alternative products to retail investors.

“There’s been a shift of private equity funds and alternative funds basically breaking down their barriers and offering their products via retail- friendly structures into the marketplace. That’s what we are doing,” he says. “We’re one of the smaller players, but we’re able to take advantage of our relationships, so we’ve been able to develop.”

Diamond also has some more wholesome business interests, in the form of Plenish Cleanse, a cold pressed juice. Diamond – alongside Peter Duben’s Oakley Capital – is a director, and is so enthusiastic about the benefits of drinking it that the small bottles of the colourful juice are now dotted around his office. (I try a ‘mind body green’ one, stuffed with cucumber, spinach, kale and parsley – it’s cold, refreshing and tastes like a health kick.) “We’re now in Ocado, Whole Foods and Planet Organic, and are going from strength to strength,” he says proudly. Plenish isn’t his first foray into wellbeing, though – Diamond is also a keen kick-boxer and deadlifter.

“I’ve always been extreme in my sport,” he admits. “I’ve Thai boxed since I was 14, but I’m getting a bit sick of the bruises that you get from it.” Plus, after a “disastrous” backpacking trip to a Thailand kickboxing camp on Ko Pha Ngan years ago (think huge mosquitoes and having an epidural for the back pain), lifting weights in a hedge fund-friendly Mayfair gym seemed the more attractive proposition.

Well, if the property development fund doesn’t work out...

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Shard’s builders still thinking big in London

The father and son behind the creation of the tallest tower in London have linked up with a hedge fund to finance a new wave of development.

James Sellar, the son of Irvine Sellar, who developed the Shard, has set up Opus Real Estate with Mansard Capital, a hedge fund and “alternative asset manager” founded by Leon Diamond.

Opus is looking for institutions willing to invest at least £1 million apiece, which will be invested in fresh residential and mixed-use opportunities in the capital.

James Sellar is the driving force behind the fund, which has so far had a “soft launch”. However, he said he expected that his father would sit on the investment committee when the fund reached a critical mass.

Irvine Sellar started out selling floral bell-bottom jeans on Carnaby Street in the 1960s but has been active in property for decades.
He has made his name in the sector after doggedly pursuing his goal of creating a “shard of glass” next to London Bridge station, a dream that was eventually fulfilled only with the backing of deep-pocketed Qatari investors.

The Opus Fund will not have exposure to any existing assets developed by Sellar Property, such as the Shard and the neighbouring News Building, which is home to The Times, or its mixed-use project with Royal Mail in Paddington.
However, it will have access to other residential and mixed-use projects in Sellar Development’s pipeline as well as seeking out new opportunities. “Mansard is the investment manager and we will go out to find the sites and try and match them to the right investors [in the fund],” James Sellar said.

“We have a pool of investors and an agreed investment profile and will look to find the best opportunities.”

Mansard was founded by Mr Diamond in 2010 and has already launched at least four funds but has not had any real estate exposure so far, which is why it has teamed up with Mr Sellar.

“They are not property people but we are, so that is the synergy,” he said.

Opus is seeking £300 million and is targeting a return of between 12 per cent and 14 per cent.

Mr Sellar, who will co-invest and receive a development management fee as well as a share of any potential profits, said that he would look for sites where his expertise in gaining planning permission could add “significant value”.

In particular, Opus will focus on mixed-use investments, with a substantial proportion of mid to high-value residential, in London’s central zones, which are close to large-scale infrastructure, such as stations or future Crossrail sites.

After its development of the Shard, which towers over London Bridge station, the Sellar group has gained renowned expertise in securing planning for, and executing, complex projects.

“The property market is slowing but there is still good growth and value out there,” said James Sellar, who studied urban estate management at the University of Westminster and started his career at CBRE, a large property consultancy.

“There are sites that we are looking at where we can create the real value through planning,” he said.

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Take anindependentdirection

OFFERING

AssetManagement

PrincipleInvestment

AdvisoryServices

ASSET MANAGEMENT

PRINCIPLE INVESTMENT

Innovation

Unconstrained

ADVISORY SERVICES

INVESTOR PORTAL

LOG IN

PRESS

Diamond, in the Rough

Mansard capital awarded 130m mandate

Shard’s builders still thinking big in London

AJ Bell makes triple acquisition in bid to rival Hargreaves

CONTACT

Diamond, in the rough

Mansard capital awarded £130m mandate

Shard’s builders still thinking big in London

AJ Bell makes triple acquisition in bid to rival Hargreaves

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Take an
independent
direction

Asset
Management

Principle
Investment

Advisory
Services