PRIVATE EQUITY

Private Equity has been the cornerstone of Bravemarket’s expertise since its founding in 1988. Bravemarket Private Equity Platform invests in and partners with industry-leading franchises and companies poised for significant improvement or growth that attract high-quality management teams. We are disciplined and systematic investors, focusing on long-term business fundamentals. We pursue traditional management buyouts, opportunistic buyouts and build-ups, corporate carve-outs, and distressed investments, and target investments on behalf of managed funds at deep discounts to market value. We also seek to find opportunities to provide growth capital, as well as minority investments and investments in public equities where we can partner with public companies and leverage our industry expertise and operational capabilities.

Bravemarket Private Equity teams take an individualized approach to each portfolio company because we believe that each business has different needs. We define our success by the success of our global partnership approach. We look to partner closely and productively with management teams and entrepreneurs that have track records of success. We believe that the combination of our industry knowledge, investment experience, and operational expertise provide us with an edge in identifying and creating value in investment opportunities. Our strategy is not only to work as partners with the management of our portfolio companies, but also to assist in the growth trajectory of their businesses by leveraging the resources of our global platform and our diverse sets of skills across market cycles. Our strengths are our readiness to embrace complexity, ability to adapt quickly to capitalize on market dislocations, and exceptional structuring expertise to capture and generate value. We also aim to work closely with our portfolio companies on operational improvements, with flexible capital structures providing downside protection. This is where our private equity business benefits from its integration with our credit business, institutional advisory business, and corporate labs division.

Bravemarket Private Equity Platform emphasizes intensive fundamental research and a growth-oriented, value-add investment approach, rather than reliance on excessive risk, as the best path to high and consistent long-term returns. With access to more than 450 investment bankers operating in twelve industry verticals in the United States, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, our proprietary deal flow is amplified by our continuous contact with companies, key executives, private equity firms and leaders in their respective industries. We also leverage on our access to over 120 research analysts globally to bring independent insight into companies, market trends and industries when we conduct our due diligence on prospective investment opportunities. The research analysts cover over 1,250 publicly listed companies, primarily in the small and mid-cap segments. They also produce significant industry reports and regularly host specialized industry conferences.

We have a highly selective and systematic investment process that requires a collaborative effort between the merchant banking team, research analysts and our network of industry relationships. Before making an investment, Bravemarket always considers potential exit alternatives. We favor investments which are likely to generate multiple exit alternatives within three to five years. We have significant experience positioning portfolio companies for and facilitating exits, including sales to strategic acquirers, recapitalizations and initial public offerings (“IPOs”). To add value, we assist portfolio companies by advising senior management on broad strategic initiatives, facilitating new business relationships, supporting financial management and planning, and providing guidance with respect to capital raising activities and add-on acquisition strategies.

Our successful investment record is predicated on following three key tenets. First, we apply discipline to all our private equity investments, knowing when to be cautious and when to lean into great investment ideas. Second, we are undeterred by complexity in transactions. We embrace idiosyncratic opportunities which others are either unwilling or unable to tackle. Third, we are intentionally flexible in all our private market investments. We believe our proven investment track record is driven by our ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions.

Accordingly, we have extensive experience in completing leveraged buy-outs (“LBOs”) across various market cycles. We take a highly differentiated approach to investing in these transactions through accretive platform build-ups, take-private transactions that arbitrage public market dislocation, franchise companies in out-of-favor or dislocated industries, and situations that require navigating complicated operational execution. We are also among one of the most active private equity investors in corporate carve-outs, in which a business is extracted from a larger corporate parent to create a stand-alone enterprise, building significant infrastructure around the business. Carve-out transactions are labor-intensive, requiring deep industry knowledge, patience and creativity to unlock value that has been overlooked or under-managed. We also have an established track record of investing across the capital structure of a company.

The private equity funds we manage have owned or invested in more than 140 companies since its inception, across sectors that include financial services, business services, consumer services, healthcare, information and data, software, utilities, specialty chemicals, natural resources, consumer and retail, leisure, manufacturing and industrial, logistics, and media, telecom and technology. Through steadfast purchase price discipline and active portfolio management, collaborating with management teams and a strong bench of operating executives, the private equity funds we manage have generated strong returns across market cycles, while focusing on downside protection..

Our private equity funds invest primarily in middle-market growth companies and established companies with attractive free cash flow characteristics with revenues typically driven more by secular growth trends than overall GDP growth. We also seek platform acquisitions in fragmented industries with opportunities for consolidation and under-managed companies where we have identified a path to re-accelerate growth through operating improvements and/or strategic repositioning. Although we consider a broad range of transactions, we typically target companies with enterprise values of between USD 250 million and USD 5 billion.