LONDON, UK, April 16th, 2024: After having deployed over €250M of equity capital in the past twelve months, including three platform investments and two sizeable add-ons, Cap10 Founding Partner Fabrice Nottin features in the ‘Life of a Dealmaker’ podcast, by Mayer Brown.
Mayer Brown Partner, Tarun Patel discusses with Fabrice the private equity landscape and the current deal environment; taking a glimpse into how Fabrice’s career journey, including his past roles and experiences at Apollo, Lion Capital and CVC have defined Cap10’s unique investment strategy.
Fabrice says, “the idea was to bring the Apollo skillset, the very creative, disciplined and sophisticated approach into the lower mid-market, which I believe is the most attractive buyout segment in Europe.”
Cap10’s investment strategy and focus on sourcing primary-like transactions through its thematic approach, limited dependence on leverage and early identification of multiple value creation levers to deliver asymmetric returns to the upside means it is well adapted to investing in all environments.
Fabrice commented, “the past 15 months have probably been the most attractive time to deploy capital since 2008-2009, Cap10’s investment strategy is perfectly suited to the current challenging deal environment characterised by suboptimal financing markets and reduced appetite for new investments from a lot of sponsors.”
In the podcast, Fabrice talks about the attractiveness of public-to-private investments which led to like Cap10’s first investment in Sureserve last year, the importance of choosing the right person to run a portfolio company, and the opportunity to combine experience and knowledge of a talented team to both transform businesses and identify new opportunities.
Fabrice adds, “the most important decision – after the investment itself – is the person who’s going to run the business. The difference between an amazing CEO and a good CEO is not 10 or 20 bps of returns, it can be multiples of MOIC. The alignment on the vision and the strategy between the sponsor and the management team are critical to the success of an investment.”
See Fabrice’s viewpoints and Cap10’s approach to private equity by accessing the full interview here.
