Hello Rainmakers,
Niki McKenzie is on a mission: to raise awareness of, and increase diversity in, the world of angel investing.
And she’s the person best placed to do so, as joint managing director of the oldest Scottish angel group Archangels and chair of the world’s oldest angel industry body Angel Capital Scotland (formerly LINC Scotland).
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Like many business angels, it wasn’t until relatively late in her career that Niki McKenzie joined a syndicate.
She qualified as a chartered accountant while working on corporate finance at KPMG from 1992 to 1995, before joining Bank of Scotland, moving from associate director to director of structured finance after two years, and staying for another four. She then became director of strategic projects at HBOS for seven years, until 2009, before being named senior manager of change and operations across across Lloyds Banking Group; staying there until 2011.
“I was doing leveraged debt into private equity deals out of the London market, so the complete opposite to little, high-risk equity investments,” McKenzie explains. “But I bumped into the then [Archangels] chief executive and ended up telling him he had the best job.
“That led to him getting me in to do some work on a particular company, which I managed to fit in - with the bank’s approval - on Friday afternoons,” she continues. “That deal went really well, so he eventually had to offer me a proper job.
“Essentially it’s all about people and relationships - and being able to do a set of legals, but that’s not hard - so I think people from any profession can get involved, as long as they can handle difficult conversations, resolve complicated problems and have sound judgement of possible outcomes.”
