As the European managing partner of DB Capital Partners, the 40-year-old former Bankers Trust leveraged finance chief did dozens of MBOs.
But Clempson’s most challenging deal by far was the recent MBO of DB Capital Partners itself. Along with U.S.-based chief executive Ted Virtue, other firm managers and outside investors, Clempson arranged the E1.5 billion ($1.65 billion) MBO of the Deutsche Bank unit in one of the largest and certainly most complex secondary buyouts ever carried out. Spurred by an impending tightening of capital adequacy rules and tech-related losses at DB Capital, Deutsche was only too glad to be rid of the private equity firm.
MidOcean Partners, as DB Capital will now be known, attracted blue-chip investors that include Dutch private equity powerhouse NIB Capital (backed by Europe’s two biggest pension funds: the Netherlands’ ABP and PGGM), the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the Netherlands’ wealthiest family, the Brenninkmeijers. The new firm will manage some E4.2 billion of private equity investments spread over some 120 companies across Europe and the U.S. Among them: European leisure group Center Parcs, U.S. publisher Jostens and the U.K.'s United Biscuits.
The immediate order of business, says Clempson, is to look for opportunities to realize value from existing investments -- and, presumably, dump unwanted ones. (In thinning the portfolio, he can perhaps draw inspiration from one of MidOcean’s holdings: Jenny Craig, the U.S. weight-loss specialist.) But next year MidOcean plans to embark on a fresh round of money-raising.
“Our buyout was a complex deal,” Clempson says. “Now I’m pleased that we can get back to the real business of running the portfolio.”
