Ruth Percival reached £35 million turnover in 18 months by making a promise most private equity investors refuse to consider: founders who sell to her can keep running their businesses.
The Contollo Group CEO argues that traditional mergers and acquisitions have become fundamentally broken for mid-sized companies, prioritising extraction over preservation. While competitors strip autonomy from acquired firms, Percival has built a national consultancy spanning 230 staff by doing precisely the opposite.
Her pitch challenges the sector’s orthodoxy.
“Businesses looking for investment shouldn’t view Contollo as a buyer but as a strategic home; a place where founders can protect their legacy, unlock growth and de-risk without losing the autonomy that made them successful,” Percival explained.
The model targets a specific pressure point: capable founders who’ve hit a ceiling. Some lack the time or expertise to push past mid-market scale. Others want to pursue new ventures but can’t extract capital while their wealth remains locked in a single enterprise. Many need investment in systems and governance but lack capacity to build infrastructure alone.
What they share is wariness of private equity break-up models.
Contollo, backed by NorthEdge, positions itself as long-term steward rather than asset stripper. The Group operates across logistics, property and construction, bringing sector-specific knowledge that lets founders accelerate without spending months educating their new investors. Percival’s background—Corporate Finance Partner at BDO, then Chief Integration Officer at Fishawack—gives her deep fluency in M&A mechanics and organisational transformation.
She’s applying that expertise to the built environment with uncommon aggression.
Since founding Contollo, Percival has completed five acquisitions: Abacus, MBA, TACE, ESP and KAM. The Group now spans engineering, cost consultancy and project management, delivering what it describes as ultra-low carbon projects across all business units. Plans call for doubling in size by the end of 2026, then scaling to 300 people per year thereafter.
That trajectory depends partly on an unfashionable commitment to apprenticeships. Contollo currently has 9% of its workforce in apprenticeship programmes—a figure Percival intends to push to 20% by 2028. In a sector facing acute skills shortages, that ratio would mark a significant outlier.
The built environment’s capacity crisis creates opportunity for consolidators, but Percival insists her model differs from typical roll-ups. Traditional acquirers impose standardisation, centralise decision-making, and integrate operations to extract cost synergies. Contollo’s approach—at least as articulated—preserves operational independence while providing capital and shared infrastructure.
Whether that model survives contact with scale remains an open question. Private equity investors rarely fund acquisition sprees without expecting eventual returns, and NorthEdge will presumably want an exit. Maintaining founder autonomy across dozens of businesses while driving efficiency gains presents obvious tensions.
Percival led one of the UK’s fastest-scaling consultancies before Contollo, giving her credibility on integration strategy. Her time at Fishawack involved combining multiple acquired firms—experience directly relevant to her current challenge. At BDO, she advised on transactions from the outside; now she’s executing them from within.
The 230-person consultancy operates nationwide, though the geographic spread across five acquisitions in 18 months suggests integration remains ongoing. Percival’s commitment to sustainability runs through the portfolio, with every business unit focused on whole-life performance and energy efficiency.
Her framing positions M&A as a founder problem rather than a capital problem. Mid-sized business owners face a dilemma: sell to private equity and lose control, or stay independent and hit growth limits. Contollo offers a third option, at least in theory—capital without surrender.
“Contollo is the home for founders who aren’t done yet,” Percival said. “It’s where businesses keep their identity, leaders keep their autonomy and growth becomes possible again. We don’t buy businesses to change them, we invest in them so their best chapter can begin.”
The language echoes other founder-friendly acquirers who’ve made similar promises, though few operate in construction-adjacent sectors. The built environment has historically attracted financial buyers focused on property assets rather than service businesses, making Contollo’s consultancy roll-up somewhat unusual.
Percival’s 2028 apprenticeship target represents a £2-3 million annual commitment assuming industry-standard training costs. That investment makes sense only if she expects to retain staff long-term—a bet against the sector’s typical churn.
By the end of 2026, Contollo’s headcount trajectory should clarify whether the model works at scale. Doubling from 230 staff in seven months requires either large acquisitions or aggressive organic growth, likely both. The apprenticeship pipeline won’t deliver qualified staff until 2027 at earliest, meaning near-term growth depends on acquiring experienced teams.
Which brings the model full circle: Percival needs to keep convincing mid-sized founders that selling to Contollo differs from selling to conventional buyers. The £35 million turnover provides proof of concept. Whether autonomy survives at £70 million and beyond will test the thesis.
For now, the pitch resonates with a specific cohort—founders who’ve built something valuable but reached the limits of solo operation. Percival is betting that market is larger than the M&A industry acknowledges, and that preserving founder identity delivers better returns than stripping it out.
The next 18 months will reveal whether £35 million was the beginning or the ceiling.
