…. Investors in private equity are constantly seeking to understand the elusive qualities that distinguish a high-performing CEO from the rest. Identifying these characteristics early can significantly impact investment outcomes.

…. Our recent report "Comforting delusion or expensive blind spot? The importance of management teams in mid-market private equity transactions", drawing on data from 94 investors across 50 UK private equity houses, highlights that investors attribute two-thirds (67%) of investment returns to management quality, which is not only very high but also represents a substantial rise from 58% in 2004.

…. In today's private equity landscape, investors seem to be doing less management due diligence using third parties than previously. This retreat from formal MDD often stems from fast-moving deal processes or concerns about affecting the investor-CEO relationship at a sensitive time. When diligence is done, it frequently focuses narrowly on referencing and individual assessment.

…. It’s a common scenario: a board meeting where financial targets are dissected, market trends are debated, and strategic initiatives are mapped out. Yet, often, the very engine driving these ambitions – the team and organisation – remains a shadowy figure, its inner workings unexplored. Why do boards mostly operate in the dark regarding team and organisational effectiveness, and why does it matter?

…. Pretty much all the companies Catalysis gets to work with are going through a transition - or several transitions at once.

…. I suggested recently that private equity investors are involved in building ‘value machines’ built from four components: partnership; governance; expectations; team & organisation strategy.

…. To have the highest probability of success in enabling value, the investor or Chair probably need to check whether all five contributions are likely to be provided by the people involved in post-deal planning and strategy setting. If there is a gap, it needs to be filled somehow.

Imagine the following scenario. As chief executive of a growth company, you have been working for months preparing a fund-raising process or sale to private equity. During the beauty parade of investors, almost all went out of their way to express…

A few years ago, there was a major study carried out by the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) at Aston University which looked at the performance over time of 48,000 high growth firms (HGFs) in the UK. HGFs are defined by the OECD as companies ‘with average annualised growth…

Over the years, the Catalysis team has observed that the two most frequent issues we need to help our investor clients identify and deal with are:

1. At company level, misalignment between strategic ambitions and the capability of teams and organisations to…