MAYFAIRTIMES.CO.UK 77
FInAnCE
P
ore over the annals of Mayfair
Times like the neighbourhood
boffin you are, and among the
breathlessly good lunch options
and historic looks at Shepherd
Market’s pink-lit hallways gone by, you’ll
find honest if timeworn descriptions of just
why businesses are chronically undertaking
or striving or hoping to move in.
James Mawhinney is an Australian
financier who is thoughtful about the
concept of place, and about the tacit and
explicit ways that an address tells a story.
He even asks what’s in a name.
The brand groundwork he undertook for
his investment group links our fair postcode
with an icon of the Melbourne business
skyline, 101 Collins Street – Australia’s
fourth tallest tower if you count the spire.
And with tenants like Bain and JP Morgan,
they probably do. The result is Mayfair 101.
James casts the sort of approbation on
Mayfair and St James’s that we’ve come
to expect of business entrants; conveying
positive brand messages, he says, is partly a
matter of location.
“In line with our strategy of going after
the best of the best by way of suppliers,
the companies we invest in, staff,” he
says, “it was really important for us to
have our business aligned with a location
and correspondingly a brand that people
recognise and, importantly, they trust.
And that is the Mayfair brand. We’ve got
assets across 11 countries, so we’re very well
diversified. I can almost guarantee you thatin every one of those countries a lot of the
population recognise Mayfair as a brand.”
Neither James nor his firm, however,
which has now received investment bank
status here thanks to a nod from the FCA,
are newcomers in any event. Mayfair 101’s
move into a stately Pall Mall address merely
marks the relocation of the head office to
Blighty. A portfolio company, for instance,
operated on Hay Hill for years. The bulk of
his professional time will be here from now
on.
So what does Mayfair 101 do in such
swanky environs? As craftsmen and
electricians near the end of their work
making something rather smart out of the
building’s atrium – with half its offices
enjoying a view onto Marlborough House- the f loorplan has been designed to
accommodate the changing needs of the
firm’s portfolio companies.
Mayfair 101 is hands-on and becomes
energised by businesses with impact
(money can be a little one-dimensional).
The refurbished building’s spaces allow for
keeping investee businesses in the fray.
Countless investment teams sit in quiet
complacency as businesses come to them,
hat in hand, asking for the privilege of
investment, but James says, he’s doing this
from a place of love. Growing businesses
puts a fire in his belly. So when Mayfair 101
invests, of course it’s with a view to exiting
the investment at a higher price point
than it entered at. James is not shy about
insisting that they structure non-equity
returns that tend to leave conventional debt
instruments in the dust.
Their investee companies occupy a sort
of fintech-payments-financial services
ecosystem with plenty of overlap and cross-
purposing of expertise. Throw in a dash of
real estate, some luxury hospitality, and
a willingness to collaborate, and you’re in
Mayfair 101’s sweet spot.
Provided, that is, you’re ready to have an
impact. As with any consummate
entrepreneu or business executive, even
James’s side hustles fit the modus operandi.
He understands what it sounds like to change
the world via the yacht industry, but hear him
out: the fact remains that craftspeople, crew,
marina staff and components manufacturers
the world over are sidelined, unemployed
and unpaid as boats just sit there, which they
usually do.
The firm’s expertise can be applied to a
very modern-world sort of model: launch
the app, book your boat, get off the plane in
Saint-Tropez and sail away. Putting aside for
a moment the returns to yacht owners and
the holidays of the moneyed, greasing the
wheels of unused assets in this way could be
transformative for such a substantial number
of industry people that James takes notice.
Investment returns. Impact. Pall Mall.
Our newish student is so cleverly on-brand
already that graduating from Mayfair 101 to a
PhD in post-structural Mayfair-ism is just a
matter of time.70 Pall Mall, mayfair101.com“ IT wAS REAllY IMpORTAnT FOR US TO
hAvE OUR bUSInESS AlIgnEd wITh A
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ThE MAYFAIR bRAnd”MT Aug19 76-77 finance.indd 77 30/07/2019 11:50