How private equity-savvy are German companies today?

As a global private markets mana­ger, we do not think in coun­try-speci­fic terms. We look at tran­sac­tions around the world and pick out the most attrac­tive ones, such as Hofmann Menü. A GP or mana­ger focu­sed on a parti­cu­lar region will always tell them that their market is attrac­tive right now. Our global presence with over 700 employees in 16 offices allows us to compare invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties on a global scale and select those with the most attrac­tive risk-return profile. In 2013, we looked at over 3,000 poten­tial direct invest­ments across our four asset clas­ses, Private Equity, Private Debt, Private Real Estate and Private Infra­struc­ture, and inves­ted in 86 of them: 31 in North America, 48 in Europe and 7 in Rest of World. Whether we invest in Germany in 2014 depends purely on the oppor­tu­ni­ties, but as a global mana­ger we are not forced to invest in Germany. Howe­ver, I can assure you that we are curr­ently looking at some inte­res­t­ing invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Germany.

The company has deve­lo­ped posi­tively and the previous owner Gilde did a good job in our view. Nevert­hel­ess, we see great deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial in the company for the future, for exam­ple through the deve­lo­p­ment of new custo­mer segments or further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. Our global network and our port­fo­lio of more than 3,000 compa­nies also help in this process. Among them are of course also segments and compa­nies that could be supplied by Hofmann Menue Manu­fak­tur in the future.

Due to the posi­tive deve­lo­p­ment in the PE market and the incre­asing profes­sio­na­liza­tion in our indus­try, there are indeed many compa­nies and also manage­ment teams with longer PE expe­ri­ence. Against this back­drop, we will incre­asingly see secon­dary and tertiary buyouts. FTE Auto­mo­tive, Kautex Maschi­nen­bau, ISTA are just some of the examp­les from the past year.

Mean­while, it is also no longer a secret that inves­tors even achieve slightly higher returns with secon­da­ries than with primary buyouts. This is partly due to the fact that PE expe­ri­en­ced compa­nies have a proven busi­ness model, profes­sio­nal moni­to­ring and report­ing systems. On the Part­ners Group side, we have had very good expe­ri­ence in secon­dary buyouts world­wide, as we have also been able to leverage our global presence to increase returns through opera­tio­nal value crea­tion, in parti­cu­lar through buy & build/add on stra­te­gies and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. This allows locally successful medium-sized compa­nies to be built up into global firms.