Funds galore for LBO prospects | Tax snags of a global buyout | Some examples of recent MBOs | UK buyouts grow in complexity | Managers who succeed as bosses | Spawn of an era: specialist firms | Warnings fail to dim LBO dazzle
Management buyouts are much less common in continental Europe than they are in the UK or the US. There are several reasons for this, although they differ from country to country. In broad terms, there is little tradition of share ownership by managers in the companies for which they work; unfavourable tax regulations often make it difficult to secure funding for buyouts, and the absence of an active secondary stock market in most countries means that there is no visible exit route for investors.
The situation is, however, changing. West Germany, France and the Netherlands are all thought to offer considerable potential in the buyout field over the next few years. The interest in establishing continental operations currently being shown by a number of buyout specialists in the UK bears witness to this.
Roger Brooke, chief executive of Candover Investments, the first specialist buyout fund to be established in the UK, said he is "well down the road' to forming a joint venture with a Dutch venture capital firm to launch and manage a Df150 million fund which will invest in buyouts in the Benelux countries.