The Ama Investment Approach.
We back UK SMEs with flexible capital, operational experience, and hands-on support.
Our investment focus.
At Ama, we back established, profitable businesses with tailored investment and real-world support. We’re sector-focused but flexible, providing up to £25 million in capital through structures that align with your goals - not ours. With backing from a trusted network of family offices and institutions, we offer the certainty, pragmatism, and hands-on expertise needed to help UK SMEs scale and succeed.
Our Core Sectors.
We have an extensive network that allows us to assess opportunities from any sector, however we focus on three core areas:
Financial and Professional Services
Business Services
Specialist Engineering & Industrials
Our funding.
We are not fad investors,
we’re backing businesses
that matter
Our funding comes from our network of family offices and other financial institutions, giving us access to significantly larger and more flexible pools of capital than a traditional capped size, lower mid-market fund.
We believe in matching the right funder type and funding structure to the right investment rather than a "cookie cutter approach". This is crucial to ensure alignment in terms of timeframes and goals and to deliver the best outcomes.
We are pragmatic in our approach and can provide tailored investment structures to fit the specific needs of each company and management team we back, ensuring alignment and transparency with the teams we partner with and with our investors.
We have the capability to underwrite transactions, delivering certainty to vendors and advisors, including underwriting senior debt where appropriate.
Investment leads.
Miles Otway
Founding Partner
Miles has spent his whole career in the UK SME market, latterly over 11 years as Partner and Head of New Business at lower mid-market investment firm Connection Capital, following roles with Bowmark Capital and NBGI Private Equity. He is passionate about supporting entrepreneurs and management teams to grow their businesses and co-founded Ama Capital with Ed to try and bring a better, more supportive business model to UK SME investing. <br /> <br /> Outside of work you will find Miles playing with his young family, failing to improve his golf and cheering on Harlequins at the Twickenham Stoop. <br /> <br /> Miles holds BA Hons from the University of Cambridge in both history and management studies and an MBA from London Business School.
Ed Ransome
Founding Partner
Ed began his investment career at leading transformation investor, Endless. Over his eight years in Leeds, Manchester and London, he generated significant value across multiple sectors, sizes of business and situations. He transferred this skillset to Chiltern Capital, where he spent his time as a Partner and member of the Investment and Portfolio Committee for the last five years <br /> <br /> Having competed against each other in their previous roles, Ed co-founded Ama Capital with Miles to utilise their collective experience and extensive networks to support SMEs as a more effective investor. Based on the core principles of integrity and alignment, the most enjoyable aspect of investing for Ed is finding great companies and working alongside their management teams to help improve their businesses and generate sustainable growth. <br /> <br /> Outside of work Ed enjoys spending time exploring the Chiltern Hills on his road bike, being outdoors at any time of the year (particularly in the Alps), herding his three young children and loyally supporting Sheffield Wednesday. <br /> <br /> Ed holds a BA Hons (Ind) in Geography from Leeds University and, having trained at KPMG, is a FCA of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.
Hamish Pearson
Investment Executive
Hamish has over nine years of experience across audit and transaction services. He holds a First-Class degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and began his career at Grant Thornton where he gained his ACA qualification with first-time passes, spending five years in the audit team.<br /> <br /> He then joined HMT LLP's financial due diligence team in 2020, advising on numerous mid-market transactions across a variety of sectors over four years. It was during his time at HMT where Hamish first met Miles and Ed through networking events as well as advising on several of their previous transactions.
Conly Manolas
Investment Executive
Conly is a fully qualified Chartered Financial Analyst (“CFA”) with over 13 years of global finance experience. From Perth, Western Australia, Conly started his career as a tax accountant focusing on the mining and exploration sector, then moving into corporate relationship banking working in Perth and Sydney with a consumer sector focus. Following completion of the Chartered Accountants Program and CFA Program, Conly moved to Berlin, Germany, where he worked as the sole finance employee of a health-tech start-up, following this, making the move to London where he was part of KPMG’s M&A industrials team, including a secondment with Survitec Group.<br /> <br /> Conly brings his experience across different sectors, structures and geographies to Ama Capital.
Alistair Hardie
Non-Exec Partner / Financial & Professional Services Lead
Alistair has spent his whole career in and around financial and professional services with a strong emphasis on sales and business development, and, as he often says ‘growing the top line to give us the options as to how to grow the bottom line.’ He has developed a number of models that he has successfully applied in successive CEO roles to implement this philosophy. He has held CEO roles for a management consultancy, a Europe-wide health-care business, a medical assistance business and a claims management firm.<br /> <br /> Most recently Alistair was CEO of Jensten Group, a £650m premium insurance broker. Alistair has been a NED of The Astrum Alliance, and Chair of JCRA Ltd, an interest-rate and forex hedging advisory firm, alongside Miles on the Board. Almost all of the last 20 years have seen Alistair running businesses as CEO or Chair for Private Equity owners, and after leading 4 exits, and 40 acquisitions, he stepped down in 2024 to pursue further NED and advisory roles.<br /> <br /> Alistair has known Miles for more than a decade and being at the point of moving into the plural stage of his career, Alistair was keen to take the opportunity to join the Partnership Board at Ama.<br /> <br /> When he isn’t working Alistair is very active with cycling, skiing, swimming, and endurance motor racing.
Andrew Tyler
Non-Exec Partner / Specialist Engineering & Industrials Lead
Andrew has 35 years in executive and non-executive C-Suite positions in a wide range of organisations from small start-ups to major Government agencies and global public firms. His experience is exclusively B2B across industrials, business services, and engineering/tech. His last executive roles were as Group CEO for Algeco Group (now Modulaire) and European Chief Executive for the US defence prime Northrop Grumman. <br /> <br /> Since 2020 he has been a Chair and Board Advisor in the private markets. He is a Senior Advisor to Blackstone, and is currently Chair of Ainscough Crane Hire, ETL Systems (satellite technology), DeterTech (site security systems), Joloda Hydraroll (intralogistics handling systems), Mecsia (hard FM), and Fluid Water Group (water pump and pressurisation systems) totalling well over £1Bn AUM. In addition he has exits and Board advisory experience including industrial steel, airlines, speciality chemicals, and renewable energy. He has had oversight of approximately £0.5Bn of acquisitions and exits over the past five years.<br /> <br /> Throughout his career Andrew has focused on building extraordinary teams to deliver supernormal performance. From developing young teams in a start-up environment through to coaching project delivery and procurement teams delivering vital equipment to Afghanistan, he brings a depth and breadth of experience into the private markets’ environment. Having known Ed for a number of years, Ama Capital brings the opportunity for Andrew to support the development of businesses in the critical period as they scale and expand from small to medium-sized enterprises.
Tony Buffin
Non-Exec Partner / Business Services & B2C Lead
As an experienced public and private markets executive, non-executive and entrepreneur, Tony has built and/or led a variety of businesses in the finance, building products, data analytics and consumer sectors. He previously held a range of C-suite roles as CFO, COO and/or CEO at Loyalty Management Group, Coles Group, Travis Perkins and Holland & Barrett. <br /> <br /> He is currently Executive Chair of Tecsa, a software and consumer analytics provider, which he founded in 2019. Alongside this, he has held various non-executive roles for small, medium and large financial institutions. This is when he met Ed, building a strong relationship with him whilst working as Chair of one of Ed's previous investee companies. Tony is currently the Chair of Highbourne Group and Nobia AB. <br /> <br /> Outside of work, Tony is a season ticket holder at Derby County FC and passionate about skiing and mountain biking (having previously ridden in the World Cup and held a UCI pro license).