Resource Partners

The Deal Magazine published an article about us

As the global financial crisis engulfed Europe in early 2009, Polish private equity veterans Ryszard Wojtkowski, Aleksander Kacprzyk and Piotr Noceń were gasping from some seemingly bad choices of their own. In 2007, they had left top positions in established Central European private equity firms to join the Carlyle Group. The private equity giant had dangled a new Eastern European fund, with EUR500 million and the promise of an uncharacteristic - for Carlyle, at least - midmarket focus. But Carlyle retrenched to more familiar territory. The three could either advise Carlyle's Western European, large-cap operation or fundraise for themselves in one of the most difficult environments imaginable.

They opted to go out on their own. "We very much believed in our midcap, co-financing model in Eastern Europe, and we decided to give it a try at the worst possible moment," recalls Wojtkowski in a telephone conversation from his office in Warsaw.

Three years later, the firm they created, Resource Partners, boasts an aggressive record of acquisitions in Poland, with six companies and three bolt-ons, as well as one acquisition in Latvia. Equally impressive, the Polish firm late last year pretty much doubled its initial EUR155 million fund to a total of EUR293.4 million through a large top up by its four limited partners.

In retrospect, the timing of the firm's initial push may actually have been providential. "We were helped by some of the macro factors that distinguished Poland," Kacprzyk says on the same call. That included a greater willingness by Polish entrepreneurs to entertain private equity because of a lack of funding alternatives, as well as Poland's standout economic performance in a battered Europe.

The full article is available in The Deal Magazine archives.