Embedding Operators at the Heart of Lower Mid-Market Private Equity.

March, 2026

Actum Group published a GP Profile on Ama and our operator-led approach to lower and mid-market private equity:

In the UK lower mid-market, where capital is abundant and quality deals are finite, genuine differentiation increasingly relies on more than price and leverage. Newly launched Ama Capital, co-founded by private equity investor Miles Otway alongside Ed Ransome, is building its proposition around the central  premise that operational leaders should not sit at the periphery of the Private Equity model, rather they should be embedded inside the GP from the outset.

Having launched in late 2024, Ama Capital has joined a growing number of UK-based investors focused on the lower mid-market. But where many firms bring in chairs and sector experts late in a process and incentivise them deal by deal, Ama is structured so that seasoned operators are equity owners in the firm and are actively involved in origination, diligence and post-completion value creation. The aim is to turn the oft-repeated promise of “more than just money” into something structurally real.

Independent appeal

Having spent over a decade as a Partner at  a UK lower mid-market deal by deal investor  Miles Otway’s experience there highlighted, in his view, a persistent inefficiency. The firm was funded by a high net worth investor base, that included many entrepreneurs and former CEOs whose operational insight could be extremely valuable. When engaged, they often made a meaningful difference to portfolio outcomes. But their use was ad hoc rather than systematic, and they were rarely integrated from the very start of a deal.

Ama Capital is designed to address that gap. Otway’s co-founder Ed Ransome, brings a complementary background, including eight years at private equity house Endless in Leeds, Manchester and London, with a focus on turnaround and carve-out situations and five years as a Partner in another Independent Sponsor. Together they set out to create a platform where operational experience is not an add-on but part of the firm’s core business model and incentive structures.

The Ama Model and Sector Focus

Ama backs businesses with roughly £2m–£8m of EBITDA, depending on sector and valuation. These sectors mirror the founders’ history: financial and professional services; engineering and industrials; and business services, with Otway skewing more towards white-collar environments and Ransome more towards blue-collar. Within those broad funnels, however, the actual target set is intentionally narrow. The firm is only interested in situations where it believes it can credibly demonstrate to management teams that its Operating Partners have navigated similar growth, transformation or M&A challenges before and have genuine expertise and understanding that can help the potential investee.

Operators as Co-Owners, Not Peripheral Advisors

A core structural difference at Ama is the way it regards and has included its Operating Partners. They have invested in the firm itself and are incentivised at the level of the GP, not solely on individual deals. That alignment is critical, Otway says. It means an operator who spends a week with a management team and concludes that Ama should walk away from a transaction can still be properly rewarded over time for that valuable insight. In traditional models, external chairs and experts often only see significant upside if a deal completes, which naturally biases behaviour towards getting transactions over the line.

Ama wants the opposite. It wants its Operating Partners to be as motivated to prevent bad investments as they are to help execute good ones. That requires a model in which their economics are tied to the overall quality and durability of the portfolio, not just deal volume.

The operating bench combines sectoral and functional expertise. One example is Adrian Moorhouse, known publicly as an Olympic gold medallist but professionally as the founder of Lane4, a leadership and development consultancy he scaled and sold to EY. At Ama, Moorhouse works on leadership and organisational development across investee both pre and post investment. Management due diligence is supplemented by structured leadership and business culture assessment, designed to identify where individuals have the potential to grow into the next phase of the company’s journey and what support they and the company more widely will need. This allows Ama to back teams more confidently and avoid the familiar lower mid-market tendency to “change out” executives prematurely if performance wobbles.

Buy-and-Build in Action

Ama’s recent investment in UK automotive repair centre operator, Vella Group, illustrates how this approach works in a buy-and-build context. The UK accident repair market is highly fragmented, with perhaps 2,000–2,500 sites. The leading consolidator, Steer Automotive, has around 200 sites, leaving substantial headroom for further aggregation, Otway explains.

Vella had already completed bolt-on acquisitions from its own cash flow, showing both ambition and an ability to integrate smaller deals. Ama’s investment, alongside Keyhaven Capital, is aimed at moving from opportunistic acquisitions to a more programmatic and structured buy-and-build strategy to match its already impressive organic growth.

Here the Operating Partners are integral to the plan. Alastair Hardie, an Ama Operating Partner with a long history in insurance and more than 30 acquisitions in his career, chairs the business. His background gives Vella credibility with large insurer customers while also shaping the M&A roadmap. Operating Partner Dominic Miller, co-founder of successful PE back buy and build Fishawack Health, which he took through 4 MBOs and 16 acquisitions, is contributing to designing the internal M&A function – from origination channels, through evaluation and deal structuring, to integration and cultural alignment support from Adrian Moorhouse. Ama Operating Partner James Hill, a seasoned CFO and operations specialist has joined as CFO.

Importantly, Ama’s intention is not to permanently “run” M&A for Vella from outside. The goal is to help build in-house capability over the early years so that, by year three or four, the company has the people, processes and governance to sustain its own buy-and-build programme. Ama’s role then shifts more towards oversight and support rather than day-to-day execution but much of the risk in the early periods will have been taken out of the opportunity via the application of high-quality skillsets.

The Independent Sponsor Structure and Hold Periods

Ama operates as an independent sponsor, raising capital on a deal-by-deal basis from institutional LPs such as Keyhaven, as well as family offices and other sophisticated investors. Unlike some spin-out teams that have only known pooled funds, Otway and Ransome are steeped in independent and deal-by-deal models.

The structure gives Ama flexibility in matching capital structures and investors with differing focuses to its investments. Transactions can be funded by investors whose risk appetite and time horizon suit the underlying business. Where the backer is a traditional fund, Ama aligns with the usual three-to-five-year hold expectations. Where capital comes from family offices or endowment-style investors with a stronger capital preservation mindset, it can consider longer holding periods, if that is the right path to optimise value.

This flexibility can matter in lower mid-market situations where long, compounding growth stories are attractive, but fund life constraints would otherwise force an exit at a suboptimal point, Otway explains. Ama still models cases on standard three- and five-year horizons for comparability but is not automatically compelled to sell simply because a fund clock is about to run out, he adds.

Competing in a Busy Lower Mid-Market

Otway acknowledges that the UK lower mid-market has grown more competitive, with spin-outs, independent sponsors and established platforms all active around the £2m–8m EBITDA range. However, he argues that the real battleground is no longer just entry multiple; it is the answer to a management team’s question: “Why you, rather than the other two credible bidders?”

Ama’s answer is its structure. By making operators true co-owners of the GP, involving them from origination onwards and aligning incentives so that saying “no” can be as valuable as saying “yes,” the firm is confident it can make better decisions, build stronger alignment with management teams, support them better and deliver more resilient outcomes. For LPs and founders accustomed to hearing promises of “more than just money”, Ama Capital is an attempt to show how a different ownership and incentive architecture might finally be able to make that phrase hold true.