Introducing the Hg manager

Dimitri Bernard: Hg is a private equity fund which is the European leader in LBOs in the software sector. It is a management company that was established in 1990. It therefore has a 35-year history and today has three ranges of private equity funds exclusively dedicated to buyout in the software sector in Europe. At Hg, we have the Mercury fund, which targets the heart of the Mid-Market, the Genesis fund, which targets the top end of the Mid-Market, and finally the Saturn fund, in which we have just committed to the Altaroc Odyssey 2025 fund, which targets Large Cap companies. We're talking more specifically about the Hg Saturn 4 fund. While Hg has always invested in the software sector, its very strong specialization really dates back to 2012, when the management team decided to abandon its other sectors to become a highly specialized player. The management company then progressively positioned itself as one of the world's biggest acquirers of software publishers, and in fact ranked first in the world in 2024 in Pitchbook's rankings. And if we now look at Hg at a European level, i.e. in its investment territory, it is three times bigger than competing private equity funds in the tech sector, and its size enables it to work with exceptional networks of experts, both for sourcing opportunities and for supporting portfolio companies. Our investment strategy is clear: we target companies with strong recurring revenues, high EBITDA margins (generally in excess of 40%), and a very dominant position in their market. Hg is one ofAltaroc's very good relationships, both strong and historic, not least because we invested in two of their funds in 2022. But we have also made many high-quality co-investments alongside them, with our various Vintage Altaroc Odyssey funds over the past three years.