By Business & Finance 
Barclay Clibborn leads Foresight Group’s business in Ireland. Foresight is a private equity and infrastructure and investment manager with circa €15bn of assets under management and a portfolio of over 400 infrastructure assets and 250 SMEs. Barclay joined Foresight in 2022 to establish the Dublin office and launch Foresight’s first private equity fund in Ireland, the AIB Foresight SME Fund. Prior to Foresight, Barclay spent 12 years in operating businesses across the Telecoms, Environmental Services and Energy sectors and a further 8 years as a corporate finance advisor.
By Héloïse Chaudot
What are your main priorities and goals in your role?
Foresight has growing investment interests across the island of Ireland and serves two key stakeholder groups of investors and investees. Our Irish investors, AIB and ISIF, have entrusted us with €180m to invest into Irish SMEs and energy transition infrastructure. Our investees, some of Ireland’s leading SMEs and infrastructure project developers, have similarly entrusted us as a partner that can invest for growth, build sustainability performance and grow shareholder value.
In Private Equity, our goal is to provide equity capital and partner with business shareholders to achieve their growth, and succession plans and implement sustainable best practices. The businesses we back typically generate between €0.5m and €4.0m EBITDA, but we can support pre-profit companies that provide decarbonisation related services. We are making these investments from our AIB Foresight SME Fund, which typically invests €2-5m with the ability to invest up to €10m. The Fund has made five investments to date, has exited one and invests on a sector agnostic basis across all transaction types.
In Infrastructure, our goal is to support developers in delivering key energy transition infrastructure including renewable energy generation, energy storage solutions and grid infrastructure. These will primarily be greenfield projects that we will support through the development process all the way through to commercial operation. Foresight has a strong track record in Ireland and is supporting the development of two large scale projects of national significance: the Silvermines pumped storage hydro project in Co. Tipperary and the MaresConnect interconnector project which will further connect the Irish and UK electricity grids.
What are your biggest challenges as a business leader?
The amount of global instability and uncertainty we see, and feel can ripple through every aspect of the economy and challenge business confidence and decision making. Two recent examples that are currently challenging the Irish economy include the potential impact of US tariffs and the effects of ongoing geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and Russia.
That’s why we provide businesses with far more than just the capital they need to grow. We are a supportive partner that, through our people and experience, help management teams navigate complexity and uncertainty through dialogue, analysis and operational guidance such as product diversification or opening up alternative export markets. With a forty-year investment track record, Foresight has invested through multiple economic cycles and helped our portfolio companies assimilate and adapt to the many geopolitical events including Brexit, COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine energy crisis.
What have been your highlights in business over the past year?
Foresight has had a particularly busy 12 months in Ireland. We have grown the initial team of two people working in a serviced office, to six people based in a refurbished office located on Mount Street Upper in Dublin city centre.
In Private Equity, we completed three new investments in DP Medical, TES Group and Scorebuddy from our AIB Foresight SME Fund and had two significant exits of Kingsbridge Healthcare and Hospital Services Ltd. We’ve had two new staff members join us with Pamela Clarke from IBI Corporate Finance (Dublin) and Cathal Nolan from PwC Transaction Services (Sydney).
In Infrastructure, we were delighted to secure a €125m commitment from ISIF to underpin the launch of our €1.25bn European energy transition fund. This fund will support the estimated €1.5bn construction budget for our two flagship development projects in Ireland, the MaresConnect electricity interconnector and the Silvermines pumped storage hydro project in Co Tipperary. We have also bolstered the Dublin team with the addition of Ed Wilson, who has moved across from our London team, to significantly increase our Infrastructure investment activities in Ireland.
Where do you want your business/brand to be this time next year?
We want to be the preferred partner for ambitious management teams looking for both capital and support to grow their businesses.
We are always on the lookout for new growing companies and founders to support, across all sectors and transaction types. We provide growth capital and support to help businesses grow. We also provide replacement capital to allow shareholders to partially release equity in their business ahead of planned growth and transition to a future exit; and can also allow shareholders to fully exit and allow the existing management team to continue to run the business.
We are also keen to work with infrastructure project developers keen to leverage Foresight’s significant track record in developing energy transition infrastructure, by providing capital and support to accelerate the development and commissioning of their solar, wind, battery, biomethane and other renewable projects.
Any of our five strong investment team of myself, Philip Gardiner, Pamela Clarke, Cathal Nolan and Ed Wilson are always available and keen to speak with business owners about how we can support them.
What new trends are emerging in your industry?
Whilst the imposition of US tariffs on the Irish economy has not yet reached a definitive conclusion, they have presented both a threat and an opportunity for Irish SMEs. We may not be able to rely on an FDI led model in the future, and this presents a great opportunity for our SMEs to bridge the gap and develop a strong stable of well managed and funded medium size enterprises that can drive job creation and exports. We’ve a great track record of doing this as a country, and have built world leading companies in building materials, food & beverage, aircraft leasing, technology and more recently in the data centre sector. The strength and success of our indigenous SME sector has never been more important.
The other big trend is sustainability. While investors have always been focused on financial indicators, sustainability related non-financial indicators continue to rise in importance. The drive towards decarbonisation, and better ESG performance, means that investors increasingly want to allocate capital to businesses that can demonstrate improvements in this area. Indeed, with our AIB Foresight SME Fund here in Ireland, we specifically look for each company to take pragmatic steps to help decarbonise their operations. Sustainability has always been at the heart of our investment decision making and ongoing portfolio management in Foresight and we see it as synergistic with long-term value creation.
What are the challenges facing the industry going forward?
Ireland has a strong SME community with exceptional businesses and talented management teams. Many of these businesses have inherent potential to grow further which, with the support of private equity, can make the transition from being a small or medium sized business to a significantly larger and more valuable one.
Overcoming unawareness of private equity, inertia or a default towards early trade exits are perhaps among the challenges that the private equity industry in Ireland faces. However, this is changing rapidly as the success stories build showing how private equity has helped increase the value of Irish businesses by a factor of anything between 2 times to 10 times, depending on the inherent potential in the business. These success stories have helped position private equity as an attractive alternative to an early trade exit yet preserves the option for shareholders to partially or fully realise the value of their business and secure a fully aligned and supportive partner to drive further growth and value creation.
Are there any major changes that you’d like to see in your sector?
We believe the private equity sector is in very good shape in Ireland, having grown significantly over the last decade in particular. We’re fortunate to have a number of private equity managers with excellent track records of success, an incredibly supportive local investor base and a highly professional advisory community to ensure seamless execution of transactions.
As an employer, are you finding any skill gaps in the market?
Ireland has a rich talent pool in the financial services sector and from a technical skills standpoint, we see very high calibre candidates in any recruitment drive. Beyond those skills, we are always looking for those who can bring extra flair and talent for building relationships and trust with our portfolio companies by becoming fully invested in the businesses and the success of the management teams. We’re a people business and those interpersonal skills and care for the companies we work with are critical.
With the companies themselves, we spend a significant amount of time on the org chart. We ensure we maintain strong connections with the right executive talent pools and bring in the right mix of skills and experience to the board table.
How do you keep your team/staff motivated?
The team in Ireland, as well as our teams in our 10 other regional offices in the UK, are an integral part of the single and collaborative Foresight team. We hire self-starting, entrepreneurial people that are looking for freedom to originate, drive and manage their own investments. The team is structured to be internally collaborative, rather than competitive, and we help each other across funds, functions and offices to deliver the best outcomes we can.
What is the best advice you have been given, or would give, in business?
The success of a business lives or dies with its team, and the relationships they hold amongst themselves, their customers, shareholders and other key stakeholders.
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