AyBe Capital

Vanni Treves, the firm's co-founder, is the sole known investment decision-maker. Treves was previously senior partner at law firm Macfarlanes and chairman of Korn/Ferry International in Europe, where he built the professional network that feeds Swordfish's deal pipeline. No other investment committee members or principals are publicly named.

Swordfish sources deals almost entirely through Vanni Treves's personal and professional network, built over decades in corporate law and executive search. The firm avoids competitive auctions, preferring bilateral negotiations where a retiring owner or founder seeks a discreet succession solution. This relationship-driven approach means the firm rarely competes with institutional private equity funds for assets.

No. Swordfish has never raised a conventional blind-pool private equity fund. Instead, it invests on a deal-by-deal basis using Treves's own capital alongside discretionary commitments from a small network of individual co-investors. This structure eliminates fund-life pressure and allows the firm to hold portfolio companies indefinitely.

Swordfish targets UK mid-market services companies with enterprise values roughly in the range of £5 million to £30 million. The firm seeks control-oriented majority equity positions in asset-light businesses where Treves's governance and board-construction expertise can be applied directly to improve operations and strategy.

Swordfish concentrates on services businesses — including professional services, facilities management and niche industrial services — primarily based in London and the South East. Confirmed portfolio companies have operated in contract cleaning and event security. The firm avoids capital-intensive industries and technology startups.

Swordfish's indefinite-hold, deal-by-deal model and single-founder leadership resemble a family-office posture more than a conventional private equity manager. However, the firm is registered as a private equity asset manager and invests third-party co-investor capital alongside Treves's own, placing it in a hybrid category.

Because Swordfish does not operate under a fund's fixed lifespan, it can hold portfolio companies for extended periods — a decade or longer in some cases — and sell only when an attractive exit opportunity arises. Treves has described this indefinite-hold flexibility as central to the firm's strategy (per The Times, 2006).