Investindustrial & Partnersgroup

Investindustrial is probably the most active MM PE in Italy and southern Europe in recent years. Certainly the most important Italian based PE since Clessidra's restructuring. They have significant capital commitments and often get their LPs to co-invest and go into large deals. They usually like strong Italian brands with potential for international expansion, and tend to pay well when they find a company they like. They mostly focus on consumer, leisure and industrial (mirroring the Italian market). As a strategy they like to go directly to family-owned company and convince the manager/owner to let them in (usually with majority or path to control) with capital and network to facilitate international expansion. In my experience they also tend to overbid to get exclusivity and then lower prices during DD, which worked well for them so far but is always a risky approach for the reputation of the fund, when done in repetition.

Their head and founder, Bonomi, is a smart and well connected guy, and they have quite a few partners to cover other European countries.

Their key office is in London, I honestly don't know how important their Swiss office is. I know that for being a MM PE they have quite a few employees (>50).