Private-credit & direct-lending funds

ThinCats

ThinCats is a UK alternative lender — now part of Shawbrook Group — providing secured term debt of £1–30m to mid-sized owner-managed, PE-backed, and healthcare businesses for acquisitions, MBOs, EOTs, and growth.

What they do

ThinCats structures secured, flexible term loan facilities of £1–30m for mid-sized UK SMEs, with an average ticket exceeding £6m over recent years. Its core use cases are management buyouts, employee ownership trust (EOT) transactions, acquisition finance (including buy-and-build and search funds), growth capital, and refinancing. It lends across most sectors, with particular activity in healthcare, B2B services, and telecoms, and explicitly excludes speculative property development. Institutionally funded through a c.£700m warehouse backed by Citi, Barclays, and the British Business Bank's ENABLE Guarantee programme, ThinCats completed over £381m of new lending in the year to June 2025. In October 2025, Shawbrook Group plc completed its acquisition of ThinCats; the business continues to operate under its own brand.

Where they fit in a lower-mid-market raise

ThinCats is well-suited to owner-managed businesses, PE-sponsored portfolio companies, and healthcare operators seeking £3–15m of term debt for a defined transaction — an MBO, EOT, bolt-on acquisition, or structured refinancing. Their deal-by-deal underwriting, regional origination teams, and flexibility on complex capital structures make them a credible primary lender where a clearing bank would baulk at structure complexity or modest leverage. They have a documented track record in healthcare, which makes them a natural first call for care-sector MBOs and acquisitions in the lower-mid-market.

Where they are not the fit

ThinCats is not designed for very small or plain-vanilla facilities: with an average ticket above £6m, requests below £2–3m are unlikely to attract full commercial attention even if technically eligible. They do not fund speculative property development. Revolving credit facilities, invoice finance, or asset-based lending are not part of their product set. Businesses without at least two years of filed accounts and a demonstrable earnings track record will not meet their underwriting criteria.

Published terms

Pricing
Acquisition/MBO ~6.5%-12.0% p.a. all-in (broker review) - fund pricing well above clearing banks
Speed to terms
Not published
EBITDA floor
From about £1m
Leverage
Total to 4x
Sponsored or sponsorless
Both - separate owner-managed (sponsorless) and private equity-backed propositions; sponsorless is a core strength
Where they lend
UK-wide via regional teams
How they decide
Regional origination teams → central credit/an investment committee; proprietary PRISM credit model drives risk + pricing
Covenants
A loose covenant package
Personal guarantee
Typically required
Search funds and ETA
Lends to search-fund and entrepreneurship-through-acquisition buyers on the published evidence

As published by the lender and last reviewed July 2026. Terms quoted on a deal are set by the credit, not by a published band.

The desks that lend

ThinCats lends through 2 separate books. Which one reads a deal decides the security, the covenant package and the band, so the question is rarely whether ThinCats lends, but which of these would own it.

Acquisition / MBO cashflow finance

Facility
£1m to £20m
Security
Debenture or fixed-and-floating + share pledge on acquisition vehicle
Covenants
A loose covenant package
Funds
Acquisition · Growth · MBO · Refinance
Rules out
Cashflow-led ~£1m+ EBITDA practical floor; Not for pure startups

Growth / working capital / EOT / buy-and-build term

Facility
£1m to £30m
Security
Debenture or fixed-and-floating; bullet and PIK repayment options
Covenants
A loose covenant package
Funds
Acquisition · Growth · MBO · Refinance
Rules out
Up to £30m for growth/restructuring/refinance

Limits that apply across the firm

Stated limits, taken from ThinCats’s own published criteria, beyond the ones each desk carries above. A limit is where a lender starts from, not where it always ends: several of these move on a strong enough credit.

  • No appetite in adult, crypto, gambling, pure startups or weapons

How they sit against the category

  • Its published ceiling is £30m; 15 of the 46 private-credit funds here go at least as high.
  • It opens lower than almost all of them, at £1m.
  • 15 of the 46 publish an indicative price at all; it is one of them.

Counted across the 46 private-credit & direct-lending funds in this directory, on what each one publishes. What a lender discloses and what it will do are different things.

Questions this page answers

How large a facility does ThinCats write?

Published facilities run £1m to £30m. It looks for EBITDA from about £1m. Published leverage runs total to 4x. A band is what a lender states it will do, not what it will do on a given credit.

Does ThinCats require a personal guarantee?

On ThinCats's published terms, a personal guarantee is typically required. What a lender asks for on a given credit is settled in the documents, not by a published stance.

Does ThinCats lend to search funds or ETA buyers?

Yes, on the published evidence. ThinCats lends to search-fund and entrepreneurship-through-acquisition buyers. A searcher's route to a lender usually runs through the quality of the target and the equity behind it.

Does ThinCats lend to companies without a private-equity sponsor?

Yes. ThinCats lends to owner-managed and sponsor-backed borrowers alike, so a company with no private-equity backer is not out of scope on that ground.

Where does ThinCats lend?

ThinCats lends in UK-wide via regional teams.

What covenants does ThinCats set?

A loose covenant package. A covenant package is negotiated on the facility; the published style is where the negotiation starts.

On the record

Sources: thincats.com · fundingagent.co.uk

This profile is a curated reference note drawn from public sources, not financial advice or a recommendation. Appetite and terms change; a lender's fit for a given credit is established by approaching it, not inferred from a page.