Waterland fundraising
Waterland PE just closed its two new funds and reached the €4.6bn hard cap in less than 4 months. Am I missing something? How did they managed to fund-raise that quickly? I understand that they have a high proportion of repeat investors, but seems extreme considering they aren't SUPER well known.
Anyone have color on returns in their older funds?
They’re the best (in NL)
They are the inventors of buy & build. Have done really well buying companies with 5m+ EBITDA off-market at a disciplined 7-8x EBITDA and rolling up the market, exiting the then larger company at 10-20x to larger PEs or strategics.
You won’t believe the number of 5x, 8x and 10x MOICs they print, which is why investors love them. Also charge more than your typical 20% carry which is accretive if you work there.
Challenges are obviously that it will be more and more difficult to deploy such large funds into these tiny companies and you NEED A LOT of investment professionals to keep the sourcing engine running. Some portco or local offices also perform worse than the core NL / BENELUX hub.
Believe they used to charge “super carry” (i.e tiered with 25% over 15% hurdle after your usual 20 over 8) on some of their previous funds, is that the case here?
The 25% is correct - the hurdles varied fund by fund but are generally always set in a way where they will hit it easily (for context, only one of their nine historic funds was 2x net MOIC / DPI, most significantly above).
I recommend reading PEI „Inside Waterland“ article if you wanna dig in further.
They are very well known in Europe but I consistenly had bad things about day to day work culture there (German office).
How sweaty is it there
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