LDC strengthens its Value Creation Partners team with three senior hires

LDC, the private equity investor which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, has strengthened its support for management teams across the UK with three senior hires into its Value Creation Partners (VCP) team.

Mustafa Khanbhai joins as VCP Director, Commercial; Lizzie Meadowcroft as VCP Director, Operations, Carve Out & Integration; and Prashant Selvaratnam as VCP Director, Data Strategy & AI.

The VCP team, which operates nationally, now has more than 100 years’ combined experience in board-level operational roles and consultancy. It works alongside LDC’s investors and in partnership with the management teams of portfolio businesses to unlock new avenues for sustainable growth. The team collaboratively helps to identify and deliver improvements to portfolio companies’ commercial, operational and technological capabilities, whilst improving ESG maturity, throughout the whole lifecycle of the investment partnership.

Mustafa, who is based in LDC’s Manchester office, will help the management teams of LDC portfolio companies to improve go-to-market strategies and increase commercial effectiveness as they scale and grow. He brings more than 20 years’ experience, having started his career at Mars and Virgin before joining Uber as General Manager for Customer Operations and Strategy in the UK and Ireland. He also has significant experience in scaling fast-growth technology businesses having held board director positions at packaging solutions specialist Printsource and the UK’s leading DropShip platform, Avasam.

Lizzie, who is also based in Manchester, is an experienced integration, carve-out and operational improvement specialist. She brings over 20 years’ experience in delivering complex change programmes, managing risks and enhancing value whilst working collaboratively with management teams to focus not just on the financial and delivery aspects of any change programme but also the softer skills side including employee engagement and culture. Lizzie joins LDC from Cortus Advisory, where she established a mid-market integration and separation advisory practice. Prior to this, Lizzie was at KPMG where she was a Partner in their Deal Execution Strategy team.

Based in LDC’s Bristol office, Prashant will help the management teams of LDC’s portfolio companies to build and execute data strategies that unlock value and mitigate risk, including through the use of artificial intelligence. Prashant spent his early years as a structural engineer, before moving to management consultancy firm Newton Europe. More recently he has held data leadership roles at UK scale-ups such as digital security specialist Onfido and data analytics consultancy QuantSpark, in addition to airline Condor.

Richard Haynes, Partner and Head of Value Creation Partners at LDC, said: “We know from our experience that private equity partnerships are most successful when focused on value creation, especially in challenging market conditions.