Investment strategy

As a long-term partner to leading companies, the Wendel Group is confident that its success will only grow. To ensure this, Wendel will continue to partner with ambitious entrepreneurs, assisting them with their development, supporting them with innovation and in external growth transactions, and working with them on governance and drivers for value creation.

The Executive Board roadmap is focused on diversifying Wendel’s portfolio with balanced exposure to listed and unlisted companies by generally deploying capital towards higher-growth markets, while remaining opportunistic.

In the context of the Wendel Growth initiative, Wendel expects to gain greater exposure to the growth of tomorrow, mainly by making commitments to several high-quality technology investment funds. This asset class should eventually represent 5 to 10% of net asset value. Wendel Growth has a multi-pronged objective. Not only does such investment diversify the portfolio by increasing exposure to high-growth assets, generally with a digital component or with disruptive business models, but it also improves its teams’ knowledge and that of its assets on technological innovations which could impact or enhance their value creation profiles.

Wendel’s permanent capital enables it to invest for the long term as the majority or leading shareholder in unlisted companies that are leaders in their markets, in order to boost their growth and development.

In making its investments, the Wendel Group seeks companies exhibiting as many of the following characteristics as possible:

Wendel will pursue its long-term shareholder approach, with the goal of being a top shareholder with board and critical committee seats, alongside like-minded partners. Wendel particularly favors certain circumstances, such as:

• control or joint control immediately or in phases;
• a need for a long-term, reference shareholder;
• opportunities for further reinvestment over time to accompany organic or external growth.

Growth by acquisition is an integral part of the development of Wendel Group companies. While external growth projects slowed down in 2020 primarily due to the Covid-19 crisis, the pipeline of opportunities has remained healthy. Wendel’s companies plan to achieve a portion of their growth through acquisitions, focusing on small- or medium-sized purchases that create the most value.

Wendel’s teams assist Group companies in their search for acquisitions that can create value, in deploying their external growth strategy, and in arranging the required financing.

Wendel believes in the power of giving management teams a personal financial interest in the value they help to create.

For listed subsidiaries and associates (Bureau Veritas), these mechanisms consist of stock-option and/or bonus share plans.

For unlisted subsidiaries (Cromology, Stahl, IHS Towers, Constantia Flexibles and CPI), the participation policy is based on a co-investment mechanism through which executives may make significant personal investments alongside Wendel.