Hunt Corporate Orphans After Deregulation

“This marked the beginning of a twenty-year period of deregulation in traditionally protected industries such as telecom, TV, energy, rail traffic, education, healthcare, elder care, and pharmacies. No other country was as aggressive as Sweden in breaking up monopolies, and this unexpectedly created lucrative opportunities for private equity firms. Here, operations with dominant market positions and stable revenues were sold; it was like a dream. Thus, a gigantic transfer of wealth occurred, as profits quickly multiplied in the companies once they were privately owned. In many state-owned companies at that time, there were no incentives at all to influence revenues and costs, which meant the potential was great.”

““We saw that there were many medium-sized companies that needed owners when the conglomerates were streamlined. EQT’s first acquisition was Brukens, which we bought from the steel group Böhler Uddeholm in 1995. Brukens hadn’t been managed with the left hand, it hadn’t even been managed with the left little finger. They needed a new owner.””