Following his father’s example

When he was a young university graduate, Pacific Equity Partners chairman Tim Sims saw himself going into international aid work.

The founder of Pacific Equity Partners, Tim Sims, has been honoured for charity work. Picture: John Feder.

When he was a young university graduate, Pacific Equity Partners chairman Tim Sims saw himself following in his British father’s footsteps towards international aid work.

Instead, he has become one of the country’s most successful and long-serving members of the lucrative private equity industry.

But the proceeds have helped Sims go some way of achieving his original hope — he has had the means to offer scholarships, sponsorship and assistance to more than 20 charity, community and research organisations over the past three decades.

As a consequence of philanthropic initiatives, Sims, 60, from Newport, NSW, has been made a member in the general division of the order of Australia.

Speaking yesterday to The Weekend Australian about the honour, he said it was another example of the wonderful experience he had had as a migrant. “This country has been incredibly kind to me, as it has been to many immigrants,” he says. “The openness in which we are received (by) a society that takes time to thank and reward us — that is an extraordinary society.”

The consultant-turned-deal-maker founded PEP more than 20 years ago and has had a hand in improving, repairing and expanding a long list of businesses, including some well-known consumer brands such as Hoyts, Sorbent and Peters.

After owning a business for five years, PEP typically sells them or floats them on the sharemarket for large profits.

Sims is passionate about his job, which involves solving complex problems, working with talented people and contributing to various not-for-profit groups.

Skills from his private equity career, he says, transfer well when it comes to selecting charities to assist. He believes he has an obligation to help those less advantaged.

An awakening in his early 30s with the arrival of his first child propelled Sims, a committed Christian, into philanthropy.

He describes being struck by his own weakness after questioning the reason for his existence. “I think often people end up doing what they do by accident. What defines them in different ways is their own personal agenda.”

When not at his English boarding school, Sims spent much of his youth in developing nations as part of his father’s work for the United Nations, which involved offering expertise in dry land farming. “I had always lived in developing countries and I had seen the power of bringing expertise, care and best thinking to bear on social issues.”

Work brought the businessman to Australia in 1987, where he headed regional operations of Bain & Co and LEK Partnership before starting PEP.

Sims credits the support of his close family, wife Sally, a palliative care nurse he met at 16, and long-term business partners of 40 years that he describes as “long time travellers”.