Doughty Hanson & Co
Doughty Hanson & Co is a British private equity fund manager focused on leveraged buyout and recapitalization transactions primarily of upper middle-market companies in Europe. The firm also invests opportunistically in European real estate and provides early-stage venture capital to technology companies.
Company type
Doughty Hanson is headquartered in London and has offices in Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan, Munich, Paris and Stockholm.
The firm which was founded in 1985 by Nigel Doughty, Chris Wallis and Richard Hanson is one of the oldest European buyout private equity firms. Since its inception, the firm has invested over €23 billion across more than 100 investments.
On 4 February 2012, Doughty was found dead in the gymnasium of his Lincolnshire home.[1]
Then, on 10 August 2015, the firm announced the shut down of most of its European offices after abandoning its next round of funding. The offices closed in 2015 included Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid and Stockholm.[2] In May 2017, the firm re-branded itself to DH Private Equity Partners.
History[edit]
Doughty Hanson traces its history back to 1985 when Nigel Doughty and Richard (Dick) Hanson started working together on European buyout investments within Standard Chartered Bank as founding members of its management buyout unit. In 1990 they established CWB Partners, a private equity joint venture between Standard Chartered and Westdeutsche Landesbank.
Doughty Hanson was established as an independent firm in 1995. In 1999, the group expanded its activities with the formation of a real estate investment team and the following year it established a team to focus on early-stage technology venture capital investing.
The following investments are representative of Doughty Hanson's portfolio of private companies:
Other notable investments include: TMF Group, TV3 (Ireland), Tumi Inc., Dunlop Standard Aerospace Group, Caudwell Group, and LM Wind Power.