Deloitte survey: Central European private equity market focuses more on portfolio management

Many Central European private equity (PE) firms shift in favour of portfolio management amid the uncertainty surrounding the future, with 32% of deal doers expecting to focus mostly on this, the highest level since 2015, according to the latest Deloitte Central Europe Private Equity Confidence Survey. In this context, private equity firms pause and build robust investment cases for the promising deals they are seeing.

Romania gradually became an area of significant interest for private equity funds, with mid-sized and large PE firms opening offices in Bucharest - Highlander in 2018, Mid Europa Partners in 2019 – and local players manage to raise funds dedicated to investments in Romanian SMEs - Morphosis Capital, Black Sea Fund, Early Game Ventures, ROCA, Gap Minder etc. With the last transactions announced, players such as Blackstone, Mid Europa Partners, Revetas, Innova, Abris Capital, CEE Private Equity, Highlander Partners show that Romanian companies are expected to perform well in the future and that there is room for development. We definitely remain an attractive environment for such investors. Radu Dumitrescu

In Romania, private equity activity expanded for several years reaching around 30% of the M&A market and remained at a robust level during the first half of the year. The local market has experienced new entries, e.g. Blackstone in 2019, while players already active continued to consolidate their portfolios and also acquire promising targets. For the remaining of the year, we expect deal-making to remain high. Ioana Filipescu Stamboli