Doughty Hanson & Co. is a British private equity fund manager focused on leveraged buyout and recapitalization transactions primarily of upper middle-market companies in Europe. The firm also invests opportunistically in European real estate and provides early-stage venture capital to technology companies.
Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. In the field of finance, private equity is offered instead to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the companies. In casual usage, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms, rather than the companies in which they invest.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
Autoliv is a Swedish automotive safety supplier headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, and incorporated in Delaware, United States as Autoliv, Inc. It is the world’s largest automotive safety system supplier, producing systems such as airbags, seatbelts, and steering wheels for automotive manufacturers. Autoliv's name combines auto for automobiles, and "liv" {‘li:v} the Swedish word for "life".
Svenska Handelsbanken AB is a Swedish bank providing banking services including traditional corporate transactions, investment banking and trading as well as consumer banking including insurance. Handelsbanken is one of the major banks in Sweden with a nationwide branch network.
Shareholder activism is a form of activism in which shareholders use equity stakes in a corporation to put pressure on its management. A fairly small stake may be enough to launch a successful campaign. In comparison, a full takeover bid is a much more costly and difficult undertaking. The goals of shareholder activism range from financial to non-financial. Shareholder activists can address self-dealing by corporate insiders, although large stockholders can also engage in self-dealing to themselves at the expense of smaller minority shareholders.
Bain Capital, LP is an American private investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, with around $185 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, crypto, tech opportunities, partnership opportunities, special situations, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry sectors and geographic regions. The firm was founded in 1984 by partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company. The company is headquartered at 200 Clarendon Street in Boston with 22 offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial intermediaries. The firm has assets under management of more than $1.51 trillion and annual revenues of $6.48 billion as of 2023, placing it 537 on the Fortune 1000 list of the largest U.S. companies. Headquartered at 100 East Pratt Street in Baltimore, Maryland, it has 7,868 employees across 17 international offices serving clients in 55 countries.
Hans Bertil Mattias Gardell is a Swedish historian and scholar of comparative religion. In March 2006 he was appointed of the Nathan Söderblom Chair of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. He received the Lenin Award in 2009.
Paul Myners, Baron Myners, was a British businessman and politician. In October 2008 he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer and was appointed City Minister in the Labour Government of Gordon Brown, serving until May 2010. As City Minister Myners was responsible for overseeing the financial services sector during the 2007–2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, including leading the controversial 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package. Myners sat in the House of Lords as a Labour peer until 2014, resigning to become a non-affiliated member before joining the crossbench group in 2015.
AB Custos is a Swedish investment company. In 2004, it came under the control of investors Mats Qviberg and Sven Hagströmer and was merged with their investment company Investment AB Öresund, before being subsequently demerged. The largest shareholder was the chairman, Jonas Wahlström. The firm was rebooted in 2008 and has since acquired several companies, including Metro International in 2017 and Realtid.se.
In finance, the private-equity secondary market refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private-equity and other alternative investment funds. Given the absence of established trading markets for these interests, the transfer of interests in private-equity funds as well as hedge funds can be more complex and labor-intensive.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Private equity in the 2000s represents one of the major growth periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital expanded along parallel and interrelated tracks.
IK Partners (“IK”) is a European private equity firm focused on small and mid cap investments in the Benelux, DACH, France, the Nordics countries and United Kingdom. The firm is led by Christopher Masek who has been the CEO since 2012.
Strategic block investing is a hybrid investment strategy generally used by fund managers who aim to play a constructive, active role in unlocking value from public companies through the implementation of financial, operational and governance initiatives from both minority and control positions. Strategic block investors tend to focus on publicly quoted companies but may also pursue more traditional private equity strategies.
The business career of Mitt Romney began shortly after he finished graduate school in 1975. At that time, Romney entered the management consulting industry, and in 1977 secured a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as its chief executive officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. The fortune he earned from his business career is estimated at $190–250 million.
Intel Capital Corporation is the investment arm of Intel Corporation. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, next-generation compute, semiconductor manufacturing and other technologies. The firm has been an active investor in artificial intelligence since 2014. Recent notable investments in artificial intelligence include SambaNova Systems, Figure AI, AI21 Labs, Twelve Labs, RunPod, BRIA, Anyscale, MinIO, Oxide Computer Company, among many others.
Cevian Capital is a Swedish investment firm founded in 1996 by Christer Gardell and Lars Förberg, both of whom serve as managing partners. Backed by Carl Icahn, it is the largest activist investment firm in Europe. It has offices in Stockholm, Zürich, and London.
