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Today’s Rundown

• Shareholder engagement of search funds

• Strategic add-ons as a serial acquirer

• The journey from a private equity investor into raising a search fund

• 5 deal announcements (1 fund of search funds, 2 search fund launches, 1 search fund acquisition!)

• 7 career opportunities

Weekly Highlights

• Jan Simon and Ann-Sophie Kowalewski, together with IESE Enterpreneurship and Innovation Center, published a paper on shareholder engagement in the field of search funds:

  • Search funds are growing rapidly and becoming more institutional, especially in the U.S., raising concerns about cultural dilution and governance quality

  • Shareholder engagement (SE) - defined as two-way communication between boards and shareholders - can help preserve the model’s collaborative culture

  • SE is common in public companies and has been shown to reduce risk, improve governance, and enhance financial performance; it’s less used in private firms, including search funds - until now

  • The tight-knit investor networks that supported search funds are weakening due to growth, reducing shared learning and investor alignment

  • SE can strengthen community learning, maintain cultural cohesion, and support new CEOs through better board-shareholder communication

  • Effective SE should:

    • Focus on board-level issues, not management execution

    • Be bidirectional and transparent

    • Be conducted professionally, with a long-term mindset

    • Include clear engagement protocols within investor syndicates

  • Preserving the culture is key to sustaining high performance in the search fund model; SE is proposed as a tool to help the field grow without losing its core values

• Patrik Gunnarsson Wahlén, co-founder and chairman of Volati, a Swedish rollup in the industrial industry, shared his insights on strategic add-ons that amplify ROIC as a serial acquirer:

  • Simply acquiring companies isn’t enough; true value comes from operational enhancements that drive high ROIC

  • Volati’s model combines strategic HR and targeted add-on acquisitions to boost performance and scalability within its decentralized structure

  • Add-on acquisitions provide operational and strategic benefits: they reduce risk, enable faster integration, and expand growth through existing platforms

  • Operational improvements - like cost synergies, process optimization, and shared best practices - amplify the impact of these acquisitions

  • The "secret sauce" is a deep operational understanding of how value is created and enhanced in both existing and acquired businesses

  • Financially, strategic add-ons often lower effective acquisition multiples, improving ROIC, return on equity (ROE), and reinvestment potential

  • Volati focuses on building synergistic ecosystems, not just buying companies - this disciplined, ROIC-driven approach enables sustainable and purposeful scaling

• Business Insider published a piece on Adam Froendt, managing director of search fund TrueGrit Capital, and his journey from a private equity investor into raising a search fund:

  • There are many similarities between private equity and search funds, which is why some call the latter “mini private equity”

  • However, the majority of searchers views the model as entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) - borrowing from private equity financing but fueled by the entrepreneur's desire to become an owner-manager

  • Hence, there is a clear difference: “Search fund is about jumping into a CEO role and leading and building. Private equity is about providing capital.”

  • Interest in search funds is only expected to continue as tech and consulting firms cut jobs and Wall Street hiring slows amid fears of an economic downturn

  • People shouldn't jump into search funds only because they read about it online; it’s still quite risky compared to climbing the corporate latter

Deal Announcements

• 🇬🇧 Jo Cockburn, Sandy Farmer, Scott Bannerman, and Pascal Wittet officially launched Orca Equity Partners, a fund of search fund or search fund investor, having already backed 42 searchers and invested in 10 acquisitions (link)  

• 🇬🇧 Filip Tremac launched MACI Search Capital, a search fund focused on B2B software, B2B business services, and specialty / light manufacturing (link)

• 🇩🇪 Bastian Faulhaber launched Faulhaber Unternehmensnachfolge, a search fund dedicated to leveraging digital technology and AI (link)

• 🇳🇱 Jard van Heerde, managing director of search fund Ventus Succession, announced the acquisition of Socho IT, a IT service company in the publishing business (link)

• 🇫🇷 PAI Partners, a mid-cap private equity firm, acquired Nuzoa, a distributor of animal health products and services (link)

Career Opportunities

• [PE-Asset] Interim CFO | Camino Search | DACH (apply)*

• [PE-Asset] M&A Director | Camino Search | Remote (apply)*

• [PE-Asset] Senior M&A Manager | PER | London (apply)*

• [PE] Investment Manager | Waterland | Hamburg (apply)

• [PE] Investment Manager | Pearse Partners | Paris (apply)*

• [PE] Investment Associate | Brock & Decker | Munich (apply)*

• [PE] Investment Associate | Asset Partners | Frankfurt (apply)*

_*Headhunter

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