Silverfleet Capital: New Co-Heads for Mid-Market Investing and Benelux Region

Munich, London, Paris — Silver­fleet Capi­tal, the Euro­pean private equity firm specia­li­zing in “buy to build”, is further expan­ding its invest­ment acti­vi­ties. Alex Breb­bia joins the team as Co-Head for smal­ler mid-market invest­ments and Erik Fuchs comes on board as Co-Head for the Bene­lux region based in Amsterdam.

Alex Breb­bia will support the team from London as a part­ner. Toge­ther with David MacKen­zie, he leads Silver­fleet Capital’s invest­ment acti­vi­ties in the lower and middle market segments. Silver­fleet concen­tra­tes here on compa­nies with an enter­prise value of between 25 and 75 million euros.

He has a long and successful track record inves­t­ing in smal­ler buyouts and most recently served as Mana­ging Part­ner at Spring Ventures. Prior to that, he was co-head of Barclays Ventures. Breb­bia star­ted his private equity career in 1997 at 3i, first in Edin­burgh and later in Dublin. He holds a mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring degree from Durham Univer­sity and earned his char­te­red accoun­tant creden­tial with PwC.

Erik Fuchs joins the team from Amster­dam, support­ing Adrian Yurk­wich as co-head of the Bene­lux region. Most recently, he worked at Alpha Private Equity and in corpo­rate finance at Rabo­bank, Lazard and ABN AMRO. Fuchs holds a master’s degree in busi­ness admi­nis­tra­tion from Eras­mus Univer­sity in Rotterdam.

Neil MacDou­gall, Mana­ging Part­ner at Silver­fleet Capi­tal, commen­ted, “We are deligh­ted to have Alex Breb­bia and Erik Fuchs newly on board at Silver­fleet. Both have many years of expe­ri­ence that they will bring to their new roles at Silver­fleet. Toge­ther, we will conti­nue to deve­lop our track record in both the lower and mid-market segments as well as in the Benelux.”

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has a long track record of inves­t­ing in the low to mid-market and Bene­lux. The team has comple­ted 21 smal­ler buyout deals that gene­ra­ted an invest­ment multi­ple of 2.8. This includes the acqui­si­tion of TMF, a services company based in Amster­dam, which Silver­fleet acqui­red along with SNS Reaal’s manage­ment — an exam­ple of a very successful buy-to-build invest­ment. During Silverfleet’s holding period, TMF has made more than 50 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons world­wide. The sale gene­ra­ted a 6.2x invest­ment multi­ple and an inter­nal rate of return (IRR) of 57%.

About Silver­fleet Capital
Silver­fleet Capi­tal has been active as a private equity inves­tor in the Euro­pean mid-market for more than 30 years and curr­ently mana­ges around €1.2 billion with its 30-strong invest­ment team in Munich, London, Paris, Stock­holm and Amsterdam.

Eight invest­ments have alre­ady been made from the second inde­pen­dent fund closed in 2015 with a volume of 870 million euros: The Masai Clot­hing Company, a women’s fashion whole­sa­ler and retailer head­quar­te­red in Denmark; Coven­tya, a French deve­lo­per of specialty chemi­cals; Sigma Compon­ents, a British manu­fac­tu­rer of precis­ion compon­ents for civil avia­tion; Life­time Trai­ning, a British provi­der of trai­ning programs; Pumpen­fa­brik Wangen, a manu­fac­tu­rer of specialty pumps based in Germany; Riviera Travel, a British opera­tor of escor­ted group tours and crui­ses; 7days, a West­pha­lian supplier of medi­cal work­wear; and Prefere Resins, a leading phen­o­lic and amino resin manu­fac­tu­rer in Europe.

Silver­fleet achie­ves value growth through its “buy to build” invest­ment stra­tegy. As part of this stra­tegy, Silver­fleet is acce­le­ra­ting the growth of its subsi­dia­ries by inves­t­ing in new products, produc­tion capa­city and employees, instal­ling successful retail formats or making follow-up acqui­si­ti­ons. Since 2004, Silver­fleet Capi­tal has inves­ted €1.9 billion in 28 companies.

Silver­fleet specia­li­zes in four key indus­tries: Busi­ness and Finan­cial Services, Health­care, Manu­fac­tu­ring, and Retail and Consu­mer Goods. Since 2004, the private equity inves­tor has inves­ted 33 percent of its assets in compa­nies head­quar­te­red in the DACH region, 31 percent in the UK and Ireland, 19 percent in Scan­di­na­via and 17 percent mainly in France and the Bene­lux count­ries (1).

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has a solid invest­ment track record. Most recently, Silver­fleet sold Ipes, a leading provi­der of outsour­cing services to Euro­pean private equity firms (invest­ment multi­ple 3.7x); CCC, one of the leading BPO services provi­ders in Europe, as well as Cimbria, a Danish manu­fac­tu­rer of agri­cul­tu­ral equip­ment (2); Kalle, a German manu­fac­tu­rer of arti­fi­cial sausage pellets (invest­ment multi­ple 3.5x); OFFICE, a UK foot­wear retailer (invest­ment multi­ple 3.4x); and Aesica, a leading phar­maceu­ti­cal CDMO company (invest­ment multi­ple 3.3x).