Naming the firm

The name of a private equity firm is perhaps the most basic building block of brand. The name allows firms to differentiate and convey an image. 

“The name of a firm sends a strong signal about what you stand for,” says Sara Tang, director of strategy at The Brand Union in Hong Kong, a brand consultancy that worked on Headland Capital Partners’ name after it spun out from HSBC.

In Asia for example, firms are advised to create their own bilingual names to avoid misinterpretation in Asian markets, Tang says. “There may be instances where the market will give you a [local language] name and you may not like what that means.”

She gives the example of Mercedes Benz. “Benz” translates phonetically into Chinese as “rush to die”. Another example is Microsoft’s search engine Bing, which translates to “sickness” or “disease”. 

Many firms have therefore created their own Chinese and Western names, which takes a bit of linguistic finesse. Another challenge is that many firm names are taken. Wealth and trust characters are commonly used in private equity in China, limiting choices, Tang says. 

Aside from abstract considerations, a firm’s name also has an impact on practical matters. A study by US-based brand consultancy BackBay Communications, which polled more than 300 GPs and LPs, found that 83 percent believe a brand name is critical for fundraising.

Here we collected some of the more curious private equity firm names and uncovered their origin:

Affinity Equity Partners
Based: Hong Kong
Affinity means a friendship or a liking for. When the firm spun out of UBS Capital Asia Pacific in 2004, the partners tried many names, but they were already in use. They held a name competition internally with a t-shirt as a prize. A partner saw the word “infinity” in a newspaper and changed the “I” to an “A” and found no one else owned it. The “A” also worked well “because we wanted to be at the beginning of any list,” says a spokesman for the firm.

Anacacia Capital
Based: Sydney
The name is derived from the Anacacia plant that produces the golden wattle, which is the national flower of Australia. If there is a drought, its leaves will get thin, but it still produces the golden wattle. “It’s a very resilient plant,” says Jeremy Samuel, founder and managing director. The idea is that even if there is a downturn, Anacacia can continue to produce the gold flower for investors.

Ant Capital Partners
Based: Tokyo
Ant originally started as a joint venture between UK-based internet incubator Ant Factory and Nikko Principal Investments. After Ant became independent in 2008, it retained the name because it fit with the company’s character. “We like to say we work 24 hours, seven days a week for our investors,” says Ryosuke Iinuma, managing partner of Ant’s private equity group.

Aureos Capital
Based: London
“Aureos” is a combination of the names of the Roman and Greek gods of dawn. Aurora was worshipped as the Roman goddess of the dawn and Eos, as the Greek goddess of the dawn. The firm was started ten years ago to invest in small- and medium-sized companies in emerging markets. 
Davinder Sikand, managing partner, explains, “It came from the belief 10 years ago that we were at the beginning of a new era for the emerging markets in general, and private equity in particular.”

ChrysCapital
Based: Mumbai
The firm was originally launched as Chrysalis Capital in 1999 to reflect the intention to invest in seed or early stage businesses. “Chrysalis”, a stage in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, was selected to represent a stage in the transformation of a young company into an adult, said former managing director at the firm Brahmal Vasudevan. However, US-based Chrysalis Ventures disputed the firm’s new name, saying it was too similar to its own. The firm’s name was then abbreviated to ChrysCapital.

Creador
Based: Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia-based Creador is headed by ex-ChrysCapital managing director Brahmal Vasudevan, who chose the name because it means means “creator” in Spanish and Latin. “I wanted to depict the creation of value,” said Vasudevan. He ran his idea past a friend at brand consultancy firm the Ova Group, which helped develop the firm’s logo. “If you look at our logo, the ‘a’ in Creador is an alpha sign. So we are creators of value and alpha, and alpha is outperformance in the fund management world.”

HAO Capital
Based: Beijing
“Hao” is taken from the Chinese proverb, Hao Ran Zheng Qi, which means integrity and uprightness. In English it  was shortened to “Hao” to make it easier to pronounce. The firm’s Chinese name is Hao Ran. “These are the core values that we possess as a firm and look for in our entrepreneurs,” says Simon Eckersley, co-founder and CEO.

Hony Capital
Based: Beijing
Hony is the English version of the Chinese words Hong and Yi, which are two words from Confucius, explains founder John Zhao. “Hong” means ambition and “Yi” is perseverance. “Add them together and it means a man should have large ambition but also be prepared to realise it,” Zhao says.  To make it easier to pronounce in English, Zhao coined the word “Hony”. The name has worked well, though he says some mistake it for a street version of “horny”.

Lunar Capital
Based: Shanghai
The Chinese name is – Yunyue. The English “Lunar” came after selecting the Chinese name. Yunyue relates to the idea of a veiled moon emerging from the clouds. 
“Yunyue” struck a personal chord for Derek Sulger, Lunar’s founder.  In 1999, a Goldman Sachs partner was trying to get Sulger to change his mind about resigning from Goldman and moving to China. The friend characterised the move as “going to the dark side of the moon”. Also, Sulger’s first day in China was October 1, 1999, which coincided with the Moon Festival and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. The recurring idea was auspicious moon. For the English name, Lunar Capital seemed more elegant than Moon Capital.

Leopard Capital
Based: Phnom Penh
During founder Doug Clayton’s first week in Cambodia, he unfolded a newspaper and saw a photograph of a leopard taken by a wildlife organisation, confirming the fact that the animal still existed in Cambodia. That sparked the idea for the firm name. The leopard is individualistic, efficient and powerful – qualities Clayton hopes to instil in his firm. He chose the animal’s name because it exists in nature across Asia, which, by analogy, Leopard Capital is mirroring with funds for Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. 

Drew Wilson contributed to this report.