VSS Capital Partners, the New York-headquartered private investment firm investing in healthcare, business services and education, has added W. Preston Hutchings as senior adviser.

Leveraging his three decades of senior insurance, investment management and executive leadership experience, Mr Hutchings will provide strategic guidance and work closely with VSS’s team in this role.

The company said he brings deep investment acumen, world-class business relationships and significant managerial experience to VSS’s growing pool of strategic resources, reinforcing VSS’s business development, portfolio company stewardship and sourcing capabilities.

Jeffrey Stevenson, managing partner at VSS, said: “Preston brings exceptional insurance industry, business management and board governance experience to the firm and will be an invaluable asset as we continue to grow.”

Mr Hutchings has been providing investment management stewardship to insurers and reinsurers for three decades.

He serves as chairman of Saïd Holdings Ltd, a private family office based in Bermuda.

He also serves as chairman of China Car Park Ltd, an entity that invests in parking lot businesses in mainland China and is managed by LimeTree Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity firm for which Mr Hutchings is a senior adviser.

Mr Hutchings said he looked forward to generating sustained value for the firm’s investors.

He was a senior vice-president and chief investment officer at Mid Ocean Reinsurance Ltd from January 1995 until its acquisition by XL Capital (now part of Axa) in August 1998.

He then served as a senior vice-president and chief investment officer of Renaissance Reinsurance Ltd from August 1998 until June 2005.

Mr Hutchings was a senior vice-president and chief investment officer at Arch Capital Group Ltd from June 2005 to June 2021.

He began his career as a municipal bond trader at J.P. Morgan & Company in 1981.

He earned his MA in jurisprudence in 1981 from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar, after earning his BA in 1978 from Hamilton College.

VSS provides capital for growth financing, recapitalisations, strategic acquisitions and buyouts to lower middle market companies and management teams with the goal of building companies organically as well as through a focused add-on acquisition programme.