UK’s Inflexion sets up portfolio teams in China, India

UK-focused Inflexion and France-focused MBO have hired Rohit Hegde, who previously worked for Hewlett Packard, to lead a team in Bangalore. Xuan Ye, meanwhile, who heads up the Shanghai team, has a background in private equity that includes helping investee companies establish production facilities and joint ventures in China.

Inflexion intends to use these professionals to help grow the revenues, improve cost management and increase the EBITDA of their UK-based businesses.

"Our portfolio companies are already trading and sourcing in over 70 countries worldwide and we are excited about how this development will further expand their horizons," said Simon Turner, managing partner at Inflexion. "Adding local expertise in China and India deepens our understanding of these growth markets and enables us to offer insight and access to current and future investee companies to really fuel their growth."

Like many European firms with a presence in Asia, Inflexion has no plans to invest directly in the region, and will maintain its principle investment focus on UK-based companies.

Ostensibly, at least, what these buyout firms are doing is attempting to carve out a slice of the Asian growth story without jeopardizing returns by attempting to do buyouts. Even Terra Firma, which ultimately hopes to find investment opportunities in China, has been deterred so far by the size and structure of the deals available.

In reality, though, the influx of European portfolio teams to China and Hong Kong may have more to do with the state of the exit environment in Europe than the lack of buyout opportunities in Asia. "Many European companies are cash starved at the moment and we do not see a lot of them coming to Asia to acquire - more to look for potential acquirers of themselves," Maurice Hoo, co-head of private equity at law firm Orrick, told AVCJ.

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