Experienced Private Equity Team – Operating Focus

 

Based in Prague, Czech Republic BKS is staffed with investment professionals having over 100 years of collective experience in the CEE region in private equity, corporate finance, entrepreneurial, general management and legal advisory roles.

 

The BKS investment team was constructed with a focus on incorporating operating, turnaround and entrepreneurial experience with fund management and private equity expertise. We believe this distinguishes BKS from many other funds in the CEE region that are overweighed with staff without direct industry and operating experience and limited track record. Together the members of the BKS investment team have a complimentary skill set, demonstrable track record and a local and international network from which the Fund will leverage significant added value.

 

Demonstrable Track Record

 

The members of BKS have collectively worked on investment transactions worth well over €10 billion in value in the CEE region as investors, advisors and managers of large and medium sized companies.

 

Examples of recent investments by the BKS Partners include a 5.6x cost realised return on a CEE fibre-optic network company expected in Q1 07, a 20x cost realised return on a CEE based software company, a 2.5x cost realised return on a CEE internet portal, a 2x cost realised return on a CEE systems integrator and a €150m return on investment on a restructuring exercise completed for a multinational industrial company involving a portfolio of 17 mid-market companies in Poland.  Presently, the Partners collectively manage over €300m in private equity assets in CEE on behalf of third party investors and private investments. All three of the Partners have founded companies with two of the Partners exiting in the past 15 years.

 

Differentiated Strategy & Attractive Valuations

 

What differentiates BKS is a focus on mid-market, entrepreneurial companies, the fastest-growing and most promising transaction sector in the CEE region.

 

Targeted investments in the mid-market space, €3m-€15m equity investments (€7m-€50m enterprise value), remain under served and valuations continue to be attractive in the CEE region. This is partly due to existing CEE funds becoming larger in size and targeting larger average equity sizes as well as perceived regional risk which still lags behind the commercial reality and reduces the overall competition for transactions, particularly in the mid-market. The newness of leverage finance in the region, keeps the banks conservative and this tends to dampen leverage driven pricing relative to the USA and the EU15. BKS is positioned nicely to exploit this space.

 

Activist Investment Management

 

BKS deploys an activist approach to managing portfolio companies influenced by experience gained in and outside of the region. The “classics” of added value for private equity – capital structure optimization, rationalization of production, improvements in purchasing, more effective distribution and sales, new or renewed marketing and branding, preparation for listing, and others – are, more frequently exhausted or “commoditized” in the EU15 and the USA. Within the CEE region this is not the case yet and the BKS value-added approach secures transactions and drive returns.