Peter Brooks, the managing partner of Sovereign Capital, a UK mid-market private equity house, has told investors he is leaving the firm less than four months after raising £275m (€400m) for its second fund.

An institutional investor in the fund said it was unprecedented for the head of a European buy-out firm to leave so soon after raising a fund. "We have just finished the documentation locking us in to the fund for the next 10 years and all the limited partners are pretty shocked that this can happen so early on in the fund's investment phase," he said.