Financial Investors

Currently, the overall business environment facing financial investors in Germany is one of the most challenging in recent history. The financial crisis has forced financial investors to adapt, revise and rethink their business models.

The private equity market in 2009-2010 will be dominated by restructuring activity

Steve Roberts, PwC Germany's Private Equity leader:

"It is the people at PwC, our team of advisers, who make our firm unique. PwC's deal specialists are able to offer a unique experience through our fully integrated approach and by leveraging our extensive network."

The "leveraged buy-out" model, i.e. highly leveraged corporate acquisitions, is currently being reassessed. Since the crisis started, providers of bank finance have not been as willing or able to provide leverage for private equity transactions. Hence, the private equity funds have been investigating other ways of doing deals, e.g. growth capital, minority stakes, increases in the equity ratio invested.

Moreover, many funds are involved in resolving issues within their existing portfolios e.g. covenant breaches and reset negotiations, restructuring of the capital structures.

The private equity experts at PwC provide support designed to help financial investors reach their objectives, offering them comprehensive advice throughout the private equity deal continuum and in times of financial and operational restructuring.

Our experts have extensive experience in providing advice to large German and international private equity funds as well as small and medium-sized financial investors.

Our advisory services focus on:

• Identifying and analysing appropriate investment opportunities and potential acquirers
• Advice during the offering process (buy-side or sell-side)
• Tax-optimized deal structuring and planning
• M&A advisory, including debt advisory and financial modeling
• Business due diligence (financial, commercial, operational, tax, IT, pensions etc.)
• Valuations
• Negotiation support
• IPO readiness
• Restructuring and business recovery
• Delivering deal value (post-deal integration, operational and process improvement)