Tom Lamb, the head of Barclays Private Equity’s UK operation, has emerged as a key spokesman for the private equity industry in recent years. One of the few practitioners who is prepared to highlight the industry’s problems, Mr Lamb, 51, began to give warning that deals were becoming over-leveraged nearly two years ago.
“The banks have gone bonkers. They have always been prepared to push the boat out for the right deal, but at the moment every deal seems to be the right deal,” Mr Lamb, the winner of this year’s British Venture Capital Association’s (BVCA) personality of the year, said in December 2004.
Mr Lamb, who married shortly before he joined Barclays 21 years ago and has seven children aged between 7 and 19, regrets that he has little time these days to play tennis.
One of three co-heads of Barclays Private Equity around the world, he earned a degree in chemical engineering at Imperial College before qualifying as an accountant. He worked as an accountant at Anixter, a wire and cable distributor, and System C, a software business, before joining Barclays.
Barclays Private Equity, which was named Fund of the Year in last year’s BVCA awards, is best known for its retail investments, which include Phase Eight, the womenswear retailer. In one of its most successful deals, Barclays made about five times its equity investment on its buyout of Hobbs, the women’s fashion retailer that it sold in November 2004 to its rival 3i.
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Mr Lamb said yesterday: “The private equity industry has had a fantastic run, growing profits dramatically. The big question is how it will adapt to the changing dynamic of the industry, where too much money is chasing too few deals.”