Industry Private equity Total assets $17 billion USD Headquarters London, United Kingdom Type of business Private limited company | Founder Otto van der Wyck Number of employees ~50 Founded 1986 Predecessor Barings Bank | |
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Key people Raymond Svider (New York)
Francesco Loredan (Europe) Products Private equity funds, Leveraged buyout | ||
BC Partners is a private equity firm specialising in buyouts and acquisitions financing in Europe and the United States. The firm invests across all industries. BC Partners was founded in 1986 and is based in London with additional offices in Paris; New York City; Milan and Hamburg.
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The firm competes for buyouts and investment opportunities with other large cap private equity firms including Blackstone Group, CVC Capital Partners, Advent International and The Carlyle Group. 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.
BC Partners is majority shareholder of Intelsat, the global satellite services provider valued at $16.6 billion USD in its leveraged buyout in 2007—one of the largest private equity buyouts of all time. In 2008, BC Partners replaced Intelsat's chairman with Raymond Svider, BC's New York-based co-chairman.
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History
The firm, originally 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 was formed by Barings to advise funds providing development capital, in particular for management buyouts. The principals of Baring Capital Investors completed a spinout of what would become BC Partners following the collapse of Barings in 1995. Van der Wyck left the firm in 2001 and has held senior roles with firms including Coller Capital climate change capital and AlpInvest Partners. BC is currently investing from its 9th private equity fund.
In June 2013, BC Partners agreed to buy German publisher Springer Science+Business Media 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 to the Turkish conglomerate Anadolu Endustri Holding AS for around $2.74 billion.
Significant transactions
BC Partners portfolio includes 17 companies with aggregate sales revenue of US$35 billion (€28 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 realised investments include General Healthcare (leading acute care hospital provider and independent provider of psychiatric care), C&C Group plc (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)