Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich, 29 July 2019. After a still strong year 2018, the German LBO market has yet to really take off in 2019. The latest MidCapMonitor prepared by the investment bank GCA Altium, which regularly tracks leveraged-buyout financings with a credit volume of between €20 and €500 million, confirms that there were just 32 financings in the first half of 2019 (compared to 46 in the same period last year).
The downturn has had a particularly severe effect on banks, which were already under pressure. Having closed 24 deals in the same period last year, the banks were only able to successfully complete 14 LBO transactions in the first half of 2019. For alternative lenders, primarily debt funds, the downturn was not so severe.