Building a niche in liquid credit
Every couple of months there’s an open mic night in Cookham in Berkshire, a small riverside town not known for its lively night life. Playing piano and guitar with like-minded souls is Nick Greenwood, City entrepreneur and Cambridge graduate, taking time out of his role as CIO at Haven Cove Capital Management, an independent investment firm that specialises in Liquid Credit. It is less a formal band than a rotating group of local musicians. “A collective,” Nick laughs. “Most of them are far more talented than I am.”
Usually Nick can be found in his garden office nearby, or in Berkeley Square where Haven Cove has been based since he founded it with Ashley Hudd in 2021. The two have known each other for decades and have worked together in the credit and derivatives markets for a combined 40 years, managing capital for family offices & hedge funds since 2012. Haven Cove provides bespoke investment solutions in three main categories, fund investment, separately managed accounts, and execution and advisory using Haven Cove’s investment platform to gain direct market access to Liquid Credit products.
Nick’s route into finance was more by accident than design. Raised in a family far removed from financial markets, he studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge simply because he found the subject intellectually compelling. At one point he considered an academic career and a PhD, but found himself drawn to the City in the mid-2000s when maths graduates were in high demand.
Joining Citigroup as a quant, he soon realised the role was not quite right and he moved to Barclays Capital, working in structured credit. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 reshaped the industry overnight, and it also proved instrumental for Nick by introducing him to his future co-founder Ashley when Barclays absorbed part of Lehman’s business.
“We were both quite young and ambitious and we always had this idea that eventually we might try to do something ourselves,” Nick recalls. Ashley went on to join a multi-family office group running liquid markets strategies. Nick followed a year later, and together they began managing a small pool of assets.
Moving from a global investment bank into a smaller more nimble environment showed them what running a strategy outside the traditional banking system might look like. By 2019 they were ready to try launching their own fund.
Enter Seonaid Mackenzie and the team at Sturgeon Ventures LLP
In 2019 Nick Greenwood and Ashley Hudd became designated portfolio managers to launch a hedge fund and managed account strategies within Sturgeon Ventures, utilising the regulatory incubator framework of the portfolio management firm and running a number of portfolios within Sturgeon Ventures MIFID framework. Once Haven Cove Capital Management was established in 2020, the arrangement allowed them to focus on developing their investment strategy while Sturgeon’s team handled portfolio and regulatory oversight and middle office infrastructure. In 2021 Haven Cove obtained full FCA authorisation as a full-scope MiFID investment firm to then break away from Sturgeon Ventures.
Looking back, Nick says the incubation model worked precisely because of its human dimension. While others have tried to replicate the regulatory incubation model at scale, he believes the success of Sturgeon lies in its personal approach. “What Seonaid does is very specialised,” Nick comments. “It’s fundamentally a people business and Seonaid understands the people she works with, the strategies they run and the assets involved. It’s not a plug-and-play model. When firms try to remove the human element to grow faster, it tends to go wrong.”
Seonaid’s curiosity around unusual ideas also proved a draw. Over the years Sturgeon has supported an eclectic mix of ventures, from niche funds to more unconventional investment concepts. “Seonaid is always thinking laterally,” Nick says. “She’s interested in the rules, but also in how you can structure things creatively within them. That curiosity is part of what makes her so good at what she does.”
Like many of Sturgeon’s relationships, Nick’s introduction to Seonaid came through word of mouth. “She’s incredibly refreshing and completely her own person, which is very rare in financial markets,” he adds. “The more you realise how many people know her and how she’s built the business on her own terms, the more impressive it becomes.”
His appreciation of Mackenzie creativity even extends to the family’s love of art. While Seonaid is a talented artist, her daughter Margaux, currently a student at University of Exeter, is well known for her artworks and Nick bought one at a recent charity auction.
From a professional point of view, one of the most remarkable aspects of Seonaid’s career is that she has maintained control of Sturgeon throughout its growth. “She’s never sold the business – she’s run and funded it herself with the support of a team,” Nick points out. “Running any company is difficult – I run one with a co-founder and that’s challenging enough. To do it alone for so long is extraordinary.”
Building Haven Cove
Since becoming independent, Haven Cove has evolved into a three-part business. The firm continues to run its original hedge fund strategy, while also managing separately managed accounts (SMAs) and offering advisory services. “SMAs have become the biggest part of the business but we still run the fund and we also provide advisory services.”
The investment focus remains consistent: liquid credit, particularly credit derivatives. While private credit has dominated headlines in recent years, Nick believes liquid credit is an under-appreciated part of the market. “It’s grown a lot over the past decade but hasn’t received the same attention,” he says. “We think it may come back into focus as the credit cycle turns. Private credit has been hugely popular, but it’s inherently illiquid. If we move into a tougher credit environment, that illiquidity could become a real issue.
Haven Cove’s approach is to specialise deeply in this niche rather than compete directly with the industry’s largest hedge fund platforms. Instead, Haven Cove focuses on what Nick describes as “longer-term wealth generation within liquid credit,” rather than short-term trading across multiple strategies. The firm is also working to broaden access to the asset class.
“Credit derivatives have traditionally been the domain of hedge funds and very large institutional investors,” Nick says. “Part of what we’re trying to do is introduce the asset class to sophisticated private investors and family offices who may not have had access to it before. There will be periods when opportunities are abundant and other times when things are quieter, and the challenge is building a business that can survive both.”
Although Haven Cove now operates independently, Nick’s relationship with Seonaid remains strong. The two still meet regularly and occasionally discuss potential collaborations. That ongoing connection reflects something Nick believes is central to Sturgeon’s influence: the strength of the relationships Seonaid has built over decades.
He credits working with Sturgeon as a defining stage in Haven Cove’s development, giving them the environment to prove what they could do before launching independently. “Seonaid has created this extraordinary network of people who trust her,” Nick says. “That’s incredibly powerful in any sector and particularly in financial services.”
