Deals

Update: Colvin & Co expands team, buys $2m farm

The US buy-and-lease investment manager has bought a 318 acre farm in South Minnesota and hired an investment analyst, taking the permanent team up to four.

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* Adds further details about the business and the team.

Colvin & Co, a US agriculture-focused investment manager, has hired an investment analyst as it takes its assets under management to $50 million.

The hire of Jonathan Faribairn from Associated Financial Group, the insurance agency, takes the Colvin & Co team to four. He joins Creyson Colvin, managing partner, T. Marc Schober, director and Patrick Cheney. The firm also hires a few part-time employees during acquisitions, according to Cheney.

The most recent acquisition was a 318 acre farm in South Minnesota that Colvin & Co bought for $2.26 million on behalf of a client; the equivalent of $7,100 an acre. Similar land sales in the area have gone for over $8,000 an acre, according to Cheney.

Colvin & Co is the general partner of Sather Agriculture, an open-ended private equity fund that is currently on $10 million. The bulk of its business is in managing segregated accounts for its clients.

It operates a buy-and-lease investment model buying cropping properties along the US corn-belt states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The land supply is predominantly from estate sales resulting from deaths, or from farmers wanting to sell the land and lease it back as a means to generate capital for machinery, aggregation or other improvements, according to Cheney.

The firm focuses on attracting high net worth individuals, trusts and family offices as investors. It currently has 35 clients.

The average deal sizes at Colvin & Co are between $4 million and $5 million.