Both the easy and the difficult answer to the question is: transformational opportunities where we can partner with owner-managers to create extraordinary business performance and enjoy the resulting financial rewards. Given this high bar and our small team, we are very selective about the companies with which we get involved. We only make a handful of sizable investments each year.

There’s no single formula for the type of opportunity that gets us excited. But they often have the following ingredients:

• Owner-managers with a shared vision and passion about the business
• A business with a real competitive advantage or the vision for how it can be built
• Strategy based on driving real, sustained business performance, not on financial engineering
• Current owners who care about who they pass the business onto
• Significant value creation opportunity (e.g., hundreds of millions of dollars)

In the past these opportunities have arisen in a wide range of circumstances:

• Created a new business model in an established industry that broke the industry convention of unbranded, low-margin products
• Turnaround of a business that had valuable assets but was being poorly managed
• Company in fast growing segment required significant capital to invest in sales and marketing and product development to establish itself as the leading player. Injected significant capital into company to sustain 3 years of negative cash flow
• Taking national a successful specialty retail concept required significant capital. Founders wanted to lead this expansion, but didn’t want to put all their family wealth at risk
• Identified an emerging consumer packaged good trend. Repositioned a company to become the leading supplier in a new fast growing segment
• Partnered with the founder of a leading French franchisor of consumer services to support organic growth and acquisition in France and abroad

We do not participate in club deals, where the investors often have conflicting interests and management cannot hear a coherent voice to help drive the business.

We work with our owner-managers to come up with the right capital structure to realize our joint vision and make sure we are fully aligned. We do not load up companies with a heavy debt burden to boost our returns and hope for the best. In fact, we often make investments that are 100% equity.

We have invested in companies across a wide range of industries including consumer products and services, food, specialty retail, software, biotech, medical devices and products and services to professionals. Although most of our investments have been in the US and Europe, we have invested in companies across the world leveraging our flexible structure and the international background of our team.

See the Case Studies section of the website for examples of what we’ve accomplished with our partners.