Powered by coffees, Foresight's private equity chief looks ahead with confidence

James Livingston of Foresight reveals the hot sectors for investment in 2025

Hello Rainmakers,

This is our last long read of 2024. It’s a good example of what we set out to do when we launched Rainmakers back in March - lively insights that fuel the knowledge economy of the regional M&A world.

James Livingston, head of private equity for Foresight, was generous with his thoughts and hopefully this is the kind of ‘behind the scenes’ commentary that helps oil the wheels and helps prevent timewasting random pitches.

Tomorrow we’ll have a wrap up of the best read stories on Rainmakers this year.

It’s fortunate that as a significant backer of coffee chain 200 Degrees, until recently, that Foresight’s James Livingston sees having lots of initial coffee meetings as a crucial tactical advantage for the multi-office private equity investor.

For four decades, Foresight has been at the forefront of private equity investment in the UK. From humble beginnings as two founders in a room backing tech start-ups, the firm has evolved into one of the country's largest small-cap investors, with a growing regional footprint that now spans 12 offices across the UK and Ireland.

"It's been somewhat terrifying," laughs Livingston, who has been with Foresight for 17 of the firm's 40 years. "We started as two founders investing in tech companies, and now we're a £1.6 billion Assets Under Management business, probably the biggest small-cap investor in the UK and Ireland private company space."

As head of the UK private equity team Livingston's tenure has spanned a period of remarkable growth and diversification for Foresight. While the firm's roots are in venture capital, it has expanded significantly into renewable energy and regional private equity funds in recent years. This shift has been driven by a belief that Foresight can play a vital role in supporting businesses and economic development outside of the traditional London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle.

"We opened in Nottingham in 2013, and that was our first foray into the regions," Livingston explains. "We found that local companies really liked working with local partners. So then we opened in Manchester in 2016, Cambridge in 2019, and more recently in Newcastle, Durham, Belfast, and Dublin."