The firm
Pinnacle Partners was founded in London in 2010 to do one thing well: finance companies the banking market had stopped financing. Sixteen years later the same balance sheet carries lending, growth equity, structured credit and insurance across eighteen markets — with USD 1.3 billion under management.
At a glance
Most growth companies assemble their financing from four unrelated counterparties — a lender, an equity investor, a bond desk and an insurer, each underwriting the same business separately. We hold all four on one set of books, which is why our terms stay stable when the market does not.
The firm is owned by its partners. There is no outside shareholder pressing for origination volume, and no fund life forcing an exit on a company that is still working.
History
Each step below added a capability the balance sheet was missing, rather than a product to sell. The order matters: lending first, then the funding to term it out, then the protection behind it, then the equity to hold a position through a cycle.
Pinnacle Partners opens with a single mandate: lending to profitable growth companies that the banks had stopped funding. Nine people, one balance sheet.
The first private placement terms out a pool of seasoned facilities, giving borrowers fixed-rate capital for the full tenor and the firm a matched liability.
An Asia-Pacific desk is established in Central to underwrite cross-border facilities and to place Asian institutional capital into European programmes.
Credit, key-person and D&O cover becomes a condition of close rather than a promise for later, and the insurer panel is built around investment-grade names.
An onshore team begins lending in renminbi to manufacturers and enterprise software vendors across Greater China, with FX hedged at the facility level.
Structured minority equity is added to the balance sheet so a single partner can fund two years of expansion without a new round every quarter.
Assets under management pass USD 1.3 billion across four disciplines and eighteen markets, with 410 companies financed since inception.
Offices
Origination happens locally; underwriting, hedging and reporting happen to the same standard everywhere. A facility written in Hangzhou is approved on the same framework, and reported on the same pack, as one written in London.
United Kingdom
Group headquarters and the centre of the credit and capital-markets desks. The investment committee, treasury and note-programme administration all sit here, alongside the European origination team.
Eleanor Whitfield · Managing Partner
Hong Kong SAR
Our Asia-Pacific hub, opened to serve companies raising in one currency and operating in another. The desk underwrites cross-border facilities and places Asian institutional capital into European note programmes.
Marcus Kwok · Head of Asia-Pacific
Mainland China
The onshore team covering manufacturing, logistics and enterprise software across Greater China, working from the upper floors of Hangzhou Gate on the Qiantang river. It underwrites in local currency, manages FX exposure on the group book and monitors the portfolio through the cycle.
Lena Zhao · Head of Greater China
Coverage
Governance
Policies are published to the people who have to work under them — the committee, the deal teams and every noteholder. Where we fall short, the reporting shows it in the same month.
The full limits, concentration rules and committee charter are set out in our investment policy.
Read the investment policyGroup entities are authorised in the United Kingdom and licensed in Hong Kong, with the onshore team in Hangzhou operating under local regulation. Each entity holds its own capital and is supervised separately.
The group is audited by an international firm, and noteholders receive the same monthly performance pack the investment committee works from — originations, covenant tests, impairments and coverage.
Credit approval sits with a committee that reports to the board. No member of the deal team votes, no partner can sign alone, and the committee may decline any facility regardless of relationship.
Enquiries