James Serjeant

James Serjeant is a City of London corporate broker and investment banker who has spent his career backing and floating small-cap growth companies. He began in 2000 at WestLB Panmure, working in Corporate Broking and Equity Syndication alongside Lorna Tilbian, David Poutney and Paul Richards — colleagues who would recur throughout his career. In 2002 he joined Investec Bank Plc as part of a five-person team hired to build out the bank's corporate broking department. He holds a BA in Financial Economics and International Development Studies from the University of Liverpool.

In 2006 he moved to Numis Securities, where he became Managing Director of Corporate Broking, advising publicly quoted companies including Auto Trader, Domino's Pizza, Rightmove and RWS Holdings. In June 2016, Serjeant and David Poutney left Numis to take a controlling stake in Dowgate Capital, rebuilding it as a corporate broking and wealth-management boutique focused on high-quality growth companies with a bias toward technology and media. He sits on the boards of Dowgate Capital, its parent 3B Capital, and Dowgate Wealth (from September 2019), and has served as a board member of TMT Acquisition Plc.

Over his career he has been involved in the flotation of several micro-cap companies that went on to become multi-billion-pound businesses, including Learning Technologies Group, Keywords Studios and S4 Capital. His stated passion is identifying early-stage growth businesses, advising their boards, and raising the capital needed to fund their growth ambitions — effectively acting as an early institutional/angel backer through the public-markets route.

On 9 February 2026, Singer Capital Markets completed the transfer of Dowgate Capital's corporate broking, advisory and research team — led by Serjeant — into Singer, as part of Singer's strategy to build the UK's leading small- and mid-cap investment bank. Dowgate Capital's Wimbledon debenture and company share-plan services remain under the Dowgate name.

• Backs early-stage and pre-IPO UK growth companies, typically taking them public on AIM and supporting subsequent growth capital raises.
• Strong sector bias toward TMT (technology, media, telecoms) and Support Services — the sectors where he has a "long-standing track record of advising high-quality growth companies."
• Looks for founder-led, high-quality growth businesses he can support from micro-cap through to scale; his stated aim is "identifying early stage growth businesses, advising their respective boards and raising the required capital to facilitate their growth ambitions."
• Operates through the public-markets / corporate-broking model (fundraising, IPOs, follow-on placings) rather than as a classic private angel writing personal cheques.
• Connected to Dowgate Wealth's active, engagement-led approach to undervalued UK micro- and small-caps (e.g. the Onward Opportunities investment trust, which uses private-equity-style active engagement).