Perwyn strengthens push to France with new country head

Antonini is Perwyn's first senior hire in France, after it opened a Paris office last year that is made up of an associate and investment director.

The strategy in the region will play in the mid-cap market with typical tickets of GBP 50m-GBP 200m, although it can deploy bigger depending on the project. 

"We have ambition but no target, just to do nice investments," Antonini told Unquote, declining to elaborate on how much capital Perwyn has to invest in the region but adding he wants to make a handful of investments within the next five years. 

The firm's managing director Andrew Wynn last year told sister publication Mergermarket that it had GBP 200m to deploy in Europe across private equity and growth strategies. 

The role will also see him oversee Southern Europe, with a focus on Spain and Italy. However, the investment strategy in those markets is further down the line and more opportunistic, he said. 

Perwyn's evergreen funding structure attracted him to the company, to spend less time talking to LPs and more time on investments, he said. 

"We are very focused on growth, not the IRR but the cash-on-cash multiple. Even if we have some turbulence we will wait some years before exit," he said, adding that he was impressed by Perwyn's "well above" 3x average return on its five most recent exits. 

Antonini worked for Ardian for 20 years, up until 2020, where he was involved with 12 buyouts with values ranging from EUR 15m-EUR 1.5bn and invested a total of EUR 1.5bn in equity. 

Perwyn's current French investments sit within its private equity strategy, including Isla Délice, a producer of halal meat, which it acquired in 2018, and KeoBiz, a digital-first accountancy, acquired in 2020. 

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