Tristone Capital’s approach to acquisition and integration

Our higher purpose is to provide safe, essential care and support and to improve and enrich the lives of vulnerable children, young people and adults whilst balancing profit, people and planet in all we do.

This mantra sits at the heart of everything that we do – whether that’s the process of acquiring a social care business, integrating them into the Tristone community, or helping to nurture that organisation to grow.

We believe that helping people fulfil their potential is always something worth investing in. Sustainable commercial success really can align with powerful societal impact and positive change for everyone. Delivering outstanding returns and outcomes for everyone involved is the method to achieve that. As such, strong principles of excellence, decency, sincerity, collaboration and creativity are the behaviours that underpin our work. 

Our team deeply understands the demands of social care and support and has extensive experience of investing in and building social care businesses, having supported a number of different care businesses throughout our careers. 

Our management philosophy is to operate a simple and care-centric community of businesses that focus, first and foremost, on delivering outstanding care and support. 

Businesses that we acquire and invest in remain independent, retain their identity and value base, with our job being to help support the existing management and staff teams to unlock further growth and value and ultimately positively impact more lives. 

Tristone has a clear expectation: sustainable excellence will be achieved and maintained. We are ambitious, but grounded in the knowledge that we can provide outstanding services that are: 

  • service user-focused, safe and reliable
  • innovative and creative
  • able to provide meaningful solutions and targeted outcomes
  • trusted and driven by skilled individuals who are committed to achieving excellence in social care practice. 

Our approach to acquisitions and investment 

We don’t just buy any social care business. We only buy businesses that we believe in – businesses that are already providing amazing care and support and that will continue to thrive within the Tristone community. 

When we invest in, or acquire, a business, we don’t look to make wholesale changes or fundamentally change the fabric of the company. Rather than merging businesses, looking for cost or revenue synergies across our portfolio of companies, we employ a federalised structure where the business continues to operate independently and retains its identity and value base. 

We aim to support the management team and help unlock further potential, by:

  • not cutting jobs to make more profit – we will retain and look after staff 
  • not looking to cut costs – whilst we run a financially astute group of businesses, we never look to unnecessarily cut costs 
  • working with and invest in the existing management teams 
  • investing in the business and helping it to grow – this will be done in a considered and sensible manner
  • always putting quality of service and outcomes for services users first and never jeopardising the quality of what has been built – we value how you meet the needs of vulnerable people in your unique way, and we want to build upon that
  • ensuring your business remains as an independent entity and isn’t merged into a larger group of businesses – it will retain its identity and brand 
  • protecting your legacy – we will help the business continue to thrive
  • never asking you to do something that betrays your social care values. 

Integration

Tristone employs a federal structure. This means that each portfolio company runs independently from each other, is responsible for all its functions and each board is empowered to make decisions. 

In order to deliver the Tristone vision, we believe, for many reasons, that operating a federalised and decentralised organisational structure is the most appropriate approach.

The managers of our businesses are asked to manage for maximum long-term value, rather than for next quarter’s earnings. We don’t ignore the current results of our businesses; however, we never want them to be achieved at the expense of service quality or building ever-greater competitive strengths. 

Our managers are appropriately incentivised to achieve long-term growth via a range of methods available to us, blending financial and social impact measures to harvest an “owner mentality”. 

The Tristone community

As part of the Tristone community, each business receives the following support and benefits. None are compulsory, but we provide a range of benefits that each company can choose to utilise at its own discretion. 

  • Access to our Independent Safeguarding Board
  • Sharing of best practice across the group and peer support
  • Compliance and governance support
  • Strategic and operational support
  • Financial management and reporting support
  • Access to best-in-class suppliers at competitive rates
  • Human resources support
  • Leadership team monthly webinars
  • Training days
  • Access to our property development network
  • Access to employee benefit scheme. 

Our vision is to always deliver outstanding social care, through compassion for the vulnerable individual, enriching development for our people, and uncompromising standards for our customers, and we do this whilst delivering excellent commercial returns for our investors. As we say, our higher purpose is to provide safe, essential care and support and to improve and enrich the lives of vulnerable children, young people and adults whilst balancing profit, people and planet in all we do. – full stop.

If you would like to find out more about becoming part of the Tristone community, contact info@tristone.capital