CapVis and Index win endorsement of peers

Disetronic was a CapVis portfolio firm Keystone Archive

CapVis Partners won an award for "Swiss Private Equity Firm of the Year" and Index Ventures came in second in a survey of members of the alternative asset industry.

CapVis Partners (Zurich), a private equity firm specialising in management buyouts, won the award for “Swiss Private Equity Firm of the Year” in a survey published by PrivateEquityOnline. In second place is Index Ventures (Geneva), a venture capital firm that invests in fast growing technology companies.

The selection was based on a survey of the readers of PrivateEquityOnline (PEO), a UK based, publishing house which specialises in alternative assets.

The ranking is not based on cash returns or the financial performance of the winners. It is more of an opinion poll – a measure of how private equity industry firms are regarded by their peers, institutional investors and other private equity professionals.

“It reflects the recognition of very solid, professional work, that both firms have delivered over the last couple of years,” says Dr Roberto Paganoni, of LGT Capital Partners and a member of the Swiss Private Equity and Capital Finance Associaiton (SECA).

Local expertise valued highly

The annual poll identifies the “best firms active in Europe’s private equity markets” in 20 categories. Some 3,000 readers responded to the poll (of 17,000 who were asked).

International private equity firms top some of the “best of” categories but, with the exception of Germany, local specialists dominate the individual country awards, say the poll’s organizers.

“Despite international firms having a presence in a number of European countries, the selection of local firms shows that investors and private equity professional value or rate highly local expertise and local knowledge,” says Ricky Morton, editor in chief at PEO.

CapVis has no UK office and is not often to be seen in the mainstream press. And yet it is extremely well-known within the private equity industry.

Its reputation has a lot to do with the types of firms in which it invests. “CapVis invests in solid, stable firms that are market leaders in ‘typical Swiss’ industries, such as micro-mechanics,” says Dr Alexander Krebs, a partner with CapVis in Zurich.

It has had 25 successful investments in European companies since 1990. The firm did not invest in dotcom companies.

“Winning the award confirms that our strategy of being a trustworthy, mid-market buyout firm with a regional focus is a good one,” explains Krebs.

This reporter speculates that another reason CapVis is highly regarded has to do with a series of successful “exits”. For example, SAIA-Burgess, Phonak, and Disetronic were all CapVis portfolio firms that launched successful public offerings in Switzerland and have continued, on the whole, to deliver positive returns to shareholders.

Index Ventures, which just opened an office in the UK, has a wider geographic focus and did make a few Internet firm investments in its last fund, but it is also managed some good exits over the years.

Last year’s poll did not include country categories

The choice of winners was based on solely on those spontaneous views of those surveyed. There was no short list to choose from and the voting was “closely monitored to ensure that no results were distorted,” say the survey’s organisers.

The breakdown of PEO’s users is, 25 percent US, 25 percent UK and 20 percent EU, with the rest in Asia and abroad.

The European Private Equity Firm of the Year was Apax Partners and the Best Accounting Firms were PWC and Andersen, according to those surveyed.

Apax, the mega-global private equity fund manager won “overall winner Private Equity firm of the Year”, while Guy Hands of Alchemy won “Personality of the Year”.

The buyout of the year was Yell. The full results are to be available in PrivateEquityOnline’s Annual Review.

by Valerie Thompson