BC Partners is a British international

investment firm An investment company is a financial institution principally engaged in holding, managing and investing securities. These companies in the United States are regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and must be registered under t ...

with over $40 billion of assets under management across private equity, credit and real estate in Europe and North America. Its global headquarters are in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The firm invests across all industries. BC Partners was founded in 1986 and has offices in New York,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

and

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

. Since inception, BC Partners has completed 113 private equity investments in companies with a total enterprise value of €145 billion. As one of the largest European private equity firms, BC Partners competes for buyouts and investment opportunities with other large cap private equity firms including

Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate bu ...

, KKR, CVC Capital Partners,

Advent International Advent International is a global private equity firm focused on buyouts of companies in Western and Central Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on international buyouts, growth and strategic restructuring in five core ...

and

The Carlyle Group The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and ...

. The firm raised its eighth fund in 2005, which at the time made it the largest European buyout fund. Raised in less than five months, the fund was heavily oversubscribed. Investors in previous funds supplied 90% of the capital. The firm's most recent fund, BC Partners X, was one of the largest buyout funds raised in 2018. Despite its large size, the firm is known for its operational efficiency, boasting an incredibly high amount of assets under management per investment professional. BC Partners was until recently majority shareholder of Intelsat, the global satellite services provider valued at US$16.6 billion in its leveraged buyout in 2007—one of the largest private equity buyouts of all time led by a consortium of investors including BC Partners and Silver Lake Partners. In 2008, BC Partners replaced Intelsat's chairman with Raymond Svider, BC's New York-based co-chairman. Sometime between 2008 and 2018, BC Partners sold all of Intelsat to the company.

History

The firm, founded in 1986 as Baring Capital Investors Ltd. by Otto van der Wyck, who was also a co-founder of CVC Capital Partners. Originally, BC Partners was formed by

Barings Barings LLC, known as Barings, is an international investment management firm owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company ( MassMutual). It operates as a subsidiary of MassMutual Financial Group, a diversified financial services organis ...

to advise funds providing development capital, in particular for

management buyouts A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of ...

. John Burgess joined him from Candover, the US and UK buyout house, a month after. The principals of Baring Capital Investors completed a spinout of what would become BC Partners following the collapse of

in 1995. Van der Wyck left the firm in 2001, and has held senior roles with firms including Coller Capital,

Climate Change Capital Climate Change Capital was a private asset management and advisory group founded in 2003 by Lionel Fretz and James Cameron to support efforts to develop solutions to climate change and resource depletion. Fretz left Climate Change Capital at the e ...

and

AlpInvest Partners AlpInvest Partners is a Dutch private equity asset manager with over $47 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2017. The firm invests on behalf of a broad range of institutional investors from North America, Asia, Europe, South ...

Significant transactions

As of December 31, 2019, BC Partners portfolio includes 114 companies with aggregate sales revenue of €145 billion. BC Partners can commit over $2.75 billion (€2.0 billion) of equity to any single transaction. The firm's most successful and profitable realized investments include General Healthcare (leading acute care hospital provider and independent provider of psychiatric care),

C&C Group plc C&C Group plc (known prior to its flotation as Cantrell & Cochrane Limited) is an Irish manufacturer, marketer and distributor of alcoholic drinks, particularly cider, and soft drinks. It has production facilities across Ireland, Great Britain ...

(leading seller of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages), Galbani (market-leading cheese company) and Phones 4u (leading mobile phone provider in the UK - until its bankruptcy in September 2014). In June 2013, BC Partners agreed to buy German publisher

Springer Science+Business Media Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 ...

for about 3.3 billion euros. BC Partners revealed in January 2015 that it would sell its 40.25 percent stake in its supermarket chain

Migros Türk Migros () is Switzerland's largest retail company, its largest supermarket chain and largest employer. It is also one of the forty largest retailers in the world. It is structured in the form of a cooperative federation (the Federation of Migro ...

to the Turkish conglomerate Anadolu Endustri Holding AS for around $2.74 billion. In June 2019 Chewy, which was acquired by BC Partners in 2017, and is the online pet retailer division of

PetSmart PetSmart is a privately held American chain of pet superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors are Amazon, Walmart, ...

, announced its IPO on the NYSE when it was valued at $8.8 billion. In 2019, BC Partners announced their backing for the acquisition (via the United Group) of

Vivacom Vivacom ( bg, Виваком) is the largest telecommunications company in Bulgaria and a former state-owned incumbent operator. The company is headquartered in the capital city Sofia and employs around 5,900 people, owning a mature distribution ne ...

, the largest Bulgarian telecom. The acquisition became an issue of the media and legal dispute with the company's previous owner, Empreno Ventures, which asked BC Partners to wait until judicial resolution. On November 7, BC Partners was added to a lawsuit by Empreno seeking to ban the sale of Vivacom. In early 2021, the firm entered into talks with

Inter Milan Football Club Internazionale Milano, commonly referred to as Internazionale () or simply Inter, and colloquially known as Inter Milan in English-speaking countries, is an Italian professional football club based in Milan, Lombardy. Inter is ...

owner

Suning Suning may refer to: * Suning.com, a Chinese retailer, originally corner Jiangsu Road and Ninghai Road, co-founded by Zhang Jindong, was known as Suning Appliance Co., Ltd. and Suning Commerce Group Co., Ltd. * Suning Holdings Group, the fourth lar ...

about potentially buying the football club.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bc Partners Private equity firms of the United Kingdom Financial services companies established in 1986 1986 establishments in the United Kingdom