CAPITAL PLATFORM EXPANSION
For sponsors seeking to expand their sources of capital or enhance the structure of their offerings, we: assess and evaluate the sponsor and proposed structure against the marketability of current offerings; recommend revisions to team or structure that we believe are needed for a sponsor to grow its capital base and its system to source and close investment capital; and, in most cases, we work directly with the sponsor to market our recommended structure, and assist with the placement of investment capital. At each stage, this is done with the client’s direct involvement, allowing them to independently assess our overall progress and whether they feel like what we add is what they need, or instead feel more comfortable taking our recommendations and proceeding on their own. Optimally, we find long-term arrangements and shared success. But we are also comfortable helping a client reformulate an offering even if it means that we do not have the opportunity to assist with placement. We are advisors first and foremost, and this is something that we believe is critical, in particular as it relates to the expectations of placement agents, capital introducers, and investors in our global network.
ASSESSMENT: STRUCTURE AND TEAM
We do this for sponsors and fundless sponsors alike, assisting them with the organization and management of capital development platforms that allow them to vastly expand their access to investors and capital, without also taking on the burdens associated with managing a broad spectrum of investors with discrete needs and accommodations that must be addressed in order to reliably convert interested parties into investors. We generally find that many sponsors who might otherwise seek to launch a fund or expand their own network of funds, demure because they do not believe that they can both invest capital and raise it with their existing team, while simultaneously maintaining full compliance with U.S. and non-U.S. securities, laws, and regulations. In truth, in the majority of those cases, sponsors are indeed unlikely to successfully juggle the divergent needs and demands associated with a global network of investors, regulatory bodies, and also do what they do best on a day-to-day basis.
We seek to provide an alternative option for such teams, and one that does not prey on their need for additional capital, but instead can augment their current structure in a way that is compatible and efficient both in terms of workflow, cost, and opportunity. Traditional placement firms, capital introducers, and others are boom or bust types of investments for sponsors, who will often tread very cautiously before writing big checks for outcomes that are not certain. To the contrary, we recognize and objectively assess at the outset a sponsor and its team and its prospects. If we believe that we can add the talent or systems or process that is needed for them to elevate their capital development capabilities and odds of success, then we feel confident that we can explain what we can and cannot do for that client, and reach an economic arrangement that will allow us to maintain the type of focus and consistent effort that is required to raise capital from a diversity of investors year over year, instead of deal-by-deal, or fund-by-fund.
In addition to helping our clients due diligence all aspects of team, structure, and strategies, we are able to work in concert with issuers and investors alike to ensure that institutional-quality offering documentation for direct investments and pooled investment funds is developed and that we are able to, as needed, register securities and produce the supporting financial models and forecasting required for any level of legal disclosure that might be required for any such offerings. FourPark engages its network of capital sources on a client’s behalf to test the marketability and suitability of a client’s prospective offerings and, in doing so, provides a direct feedback loop to the client allowing for seamless, real-time adjustments to offerings that might require modification in terms, or in structure, if they are to secure the funding they need as efficiently and economically as possible once they formally go to market. Whether seeking debt or equity capital, having a solid framework operated by a nimble team allows for creative thought and real-time redesign to continue throughout any placement processes, something that most clients and investors generally expect, but also generally find is cost-prohibitive or inefficient once multiple firms and voices are speaking about the same subject matter.
DEVELOPMENT: PLATFORM AND PLAN
FourPark’s integration and licensure allow us to aid issuers in the sourcing, screening, structuring, and onboarding of capital into the structures that are most suitable to the capital sources from which the capital is being sought. This integration gives us the flexibility to both architect and helps implement and enforce a process that is compliant with local securities rules and regulations in myriad markets. The net effect of this is to help our issuer clients ensure that they are presenting themselves in the most transparent and accessible way possible. One that suggests that they are taking into account the needs of those providing the capital in addition to their own. Being able to act as a U.S.-based fiduciary also gives U.S.-based and non-U.S. clients the ability to use a friendly intermediary should the source of capital or the issuer not want to be entangled in the securities rules that can affect fiduciaries in any jurisdiction.
MANAGEMENT: PROCESS AND COMPLIANCE
When clients do express a desire not to administer complex structures, or directly interface with new or expanded capital sources, then we as fiduciaries are able to step into their shoes and carry out the ground level, localized work that goes into the maintenance of sound compliance policies and procedures, as well as the related interactions with and reporting to those sources of capital. We consider the myriad issues investors might have during the time capital is deployed to an issuer, and in doing so help move considerable administrative, non-investment related work, off of the shoulders of our issuer clients. In carrying out our work, we actively seek to better understand the specific investment and reporting preferences of our issuers and investors, in each case to better harmonize their communications with one another. It is many times true that issuers fall short in terms of compliance systems, reporting protocols, or simply the time to manage their investors. We recognize this, and instead of being asked to help when something goes awry, we prefer to help our clients before, or indeed after, they identify the need.
