Added Value
Expertise
Our private equity investment professionals have expertise in most major industries. In addition, we have access to the sector expertise of a broad array of former senior corporate executives with whom we have established informal and formal proprietary advisory relationships and who work closely with our private equity professionals, helping us to develop and analyze potential investment opportunities.
Synergies
As part of a fully integrated private equity institution, SOZA Group enjoys direct access to professionals with experience and expertise in all aspects of finance and investing, including corporate private equity, mezzanine investing, corporate advisory services, and restructuring and reorganization. These resources provide timely and in-depth knowledge of critical capital market trends, valuation protocols for a diverse array of asset classes and crucial insight into risk assessment and management for various investment situations.
Complex Situations
We believe that our ability to source, evaluate and execute complex transactions within a short time frame is one of our competitive advantages. We focus on finding creative solutions to complex situations involving under-performing and/or improperly capitalized assets in an effort to both make investments at attractive valuations and to create incremental value in the investment.
Contrarian Perspective
We tend to be a contrarian private equity investor. We try to avoid being influenced by swings in conventional wisdom about the relative attractiveness of industries. Instead, we seek to identify developing industry trends in order to take advantage of them before they become widely appreciated and to pursue opportunities to change the structure and profit potential of specific industry sectors through innovation.
Global Scope
We believe that private equity investing in developing economies provides attractive opportunities, and we are therefore pursuing such opportunities wherever they may be had. In Eastern Europe, we rely on senior advisors who reside in various European countries to assist our private equity professionals. We use a similar approach to expand our reach in Asian countries. We believe we are one of a limited number of private equity firms with the advantage of access to a full range of cross-regional opportunities. We also believe our global reach helps us to better assist our portfolio companies in dealing with developments across various regions of the world, sourcing add-on acquisition opportunities, entering new markets and outsourcing operations to reduce costs.
Financing Expertise
We believe that the broad expertise of all aspects of the capital markets — debt, equity, real estate financing, derivatives and commodities — that resides across all of our firm’s businesses enables us to obtain a lower cost of capital for our portfolio companies, reduce risk and uncover hidden asset value.
Operations Oversight
Our team also consists of professionals with significant operating experience who work with our portfolio companies on operating issues. After a portfolio company is developed, our portfolio operations group typically works with the upper management of the portfolio company and outside advisors on a 100-day plan to enhance the company’s operations.
Each 100-day plan is reviewed by our investment committee. As part of our portfolio company monitoring program, we enlist our senior advisors to assist our portfolio operations group and work with portfolio companies to help them improve their operating performance. We believe that the experience of our senior advisors and our own portfolio operations personnel, combined with the expertise of our investment professionals in assisting portfolio companies with add- on acquisitions, divestitures, financings and other transactions, help our portfolio companies enhance their value. Our focus on assisting our portfolio companies with operational oversight, as well as our ability to attract, motivate and retain superior portfolio company management teams, are critical to the success of our private equity investments. The majority of our investment gains have resulted from increases in the EBITDA of our portfolio companies.
Procurement & Purchasing
We seek to unlock incremental value through the use of efficiencies of scale. We administer a procurement program throughout our participating portfolio companies to combine their purchasing power in order to purchase various goods and services at discounted prices that they would otherwise be unable to obtain on their own. We are expanding this program to cover additional types of goods and services, such as outsourcing and information technology.