Ben Marson-Knight’s route from the City of London to Tbilisi, Georgia began with a decision to step away. A solicitor with a promising career in international finance, he had qualified at Allen & Overy in 2001 before moving to Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Partnership might have seemed the natural next step. Then his father was diagnosed with a terminal illness and his perspective changed.

Marson-Knight took leave to join his parents in Spain. What was intended as a short sabbatical became two years, during which running his own business gave him an appetite for a different working life. Returning to London, he found that the conventional legal career no longer held quite the same appeal.

Instead, he became general counsel to the family office of Badri Patarkatsishvili, the Georgian businessman who died suddenly in Britain in 2008. The work was complex: tracing assets through trusts and nominee arrangements, coordinating litigation across jurisdictions and helping a family establish control over an estate whose structures were at best opaque. It was an education in how complex transactional law works in practice rather than on paper, as well as an introduction to Georgia. Alongside the forensic accounting and courtroom battles came visits to a country that would eventually become the centre of his professional life.

In 2011, two colleagues leading the recovery effort invited him to establish Hunnewell Partners. Both brought extensive experience in private equity or investment banking; Marson-Knight contributed the legal perspective developed through years of navigating complicated transactions and contested assets.

Initially focused on asset management and recovery, Hunnewell began making international private equity investments with a focus on Georgia in 2016. A controlling stake in a listed bank came first, followed by a partnership with HeidelbergCement in Georgia. Investments in telecoms, steel and real estate followed, with the property interests exited this year.

The resulting portfolio reflects a preference for businesses that already play a substantial role in the Georgian economy, or that the firm believes can quickly reach that level. It also reflects a conviction that Georgia offers opportunities its size might obscure.

Georgia has a young, cosmopolitan population and a business culture that welcomes entrepreneurial thinking

“Georgia has a young, cosmopolitan population and a business culture that welcomes entrepreneurial thinking,” he says. When he first encountered the market, relatively few companies of significant scale operated along the lines familiar to Western investors. Hunnewell saw scope to bring capital and operating discipline to that gap. Its approach includes English-law agreements and audits by major accountancy firms. With its head office in Tbilisi, the firm pairs those practices with a team whose knowledge comes from working in the country.

None of this removes the question of political risk in the Caucasus. Marson-Knight’s response is to concentrate on sectors whose usefulness endures through changes in government and political mood: “We’re investors, not politicians,” he says.

Cement, steel, banking and telecommunications fit that reasoning: essential services and materials that a functioning economy requires. Hydropower and pulp and paper are among the opportunities now under consideration.

Diversification across sectors and local experience inform the investment decisions, alongside an emphasis on businesses with substance or the potential to acquire it.

His enthusiasm for Georgia extends beyond balance sheets. Ask about the country and the conversation turns to fresh food, generous company and evenings sustained by wine and successive toasts. This a place best understood through participation: meeting people, sharing a table and allowing an evening to unfold.

Tbilisi, an ancient Silk Road city, supplies the setting; beyond it lie skiing, countryside and wine tours.

For a lawyer who expected his future to follow a familiar London trajectory, Georgia has provided something broader: a business, a base and a continuing reason to look beyond the obvious.

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