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To find out who won, book a table at the British Private Equity Party Awards 2025 on Tuesday, 30 September at The Brewrey, London
Bridgepoint
Bridgepoint has reinforced its position as the leading sponsor in the European middle market, combining sector expertise, operational rigour and platform development to deliver strong performance across fundraising, investment and realisation activity in the judging period.
In the period, Bridgepoint completed several major UK-headquartered platform investments, including the take-privates of Alpha FMC and Eckoh, and the acquisition of NMi Group. These deals were complemented by significant bolt-on activity supporting value creation, capability-building and international expansion across the portfolio.
Bridgepoint delivered significant liquidity to investors, with over €2.6 billion of distributions across equity funds in H1 2025 alone – including major exits like Kereis. The Kereis exit followed five years of disciplined value creation by Bridgepoint, during which time Kereis doubled its revenues, transformed its tech platform and diversified strategically. Bridgepoint’s realisation record during the qualifying period, alongside completion of the landmark Dorna sale, has materially enhanced DPI and validated the firm’s value creation approach.
Bridgepoint closed its latest equity fund, BDC V, over target at €2.8 billion – the largest ever dedicated to the European lower mid-market. Deployment is progressing strongly with Bridgepoint leveraging its unique origination machine and deep sector expertise to capitalise on significant opportunities in the European middle market.
Bowmark Capital
In the past 12 months, Bowmark has defied the challenging market environment, delivering profit growth of over 20% across its portfolio and three successful exits with a combined enterprise value of £1.2 billion (averaging over 3x cost).
We completed 15 new deals, including four platform investments in market leading software and technology services companies – with average profit growth of 31%, EBITDA margin of 26% and recurring revenues of 84% – and 11 bolt-on acquisitions.
We completed the realisation of Bowmark Capital Partners V, which was fully realised within 11 years of its inception, delivering excellent liquidity – despite the industry-wide exit slowdown in the fund’s later years – and generating a market-leading IRR and DPI for its vintage year. Returns were exceptionally consistent across the portfolio, with the lowest return of any investment being 2.1x cost. 83% of value creation was attributable to EBITDA growth, which averaged 25% per annum across the portfolio. This reflects Bowmark’s selective investment strategy, which aims to deliver superior performance irrespective of economic conditions.
Our exits in the period brought the gross realised return of Bowmark Capital Partners VI to 3.5x cost. They also generated proceeds for 318 portfolio company employee shareholders, the number of whom increased seven times during our investment period.
We committed to SBTi and delivered a range of other impactful ESG initiatives, including our second cross-portfolio women’s mentoring programme, to support career progression in traditionally male-dominated technology sectors.
Finally, we strengthened our team with ten new joiners and nine promotions, including four new partners.
CBPE
CBPE has had a busy and successful twelve months, including six new investments, eighteen add-on acquisitions, two strong exits, four internal promotions, and the highly successful fundraise for CBPE Fund XI, which closed at its £714m hard cap in c.3 months. The fund was significantly oversubscribed, representing a 27% increase on Fund X, with a >90% re-up rate and new commitments from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In July, CBPE began deploying Fund XI, completing its first investment in Velociti Solutions.
During the period, Fund X made five platform investments: HealthNet Homecare, HGF, Clifton Asset Management, Tetra, and HF, all UK-headquartered, cash-generative businesses aligned with CBPE’s core strategy of primary buyouts with EVs up to £175m. CBPE turned on the investment period for Fund XI in July 2025 with its first deal, Velociti Solutions.
CBPE also delivered two standout exits from Fund IX: a 5.4x MoC on Perspective and c.5.3x MoC on Centralis. The team has continued to strengthen its platform, with the addition of two in-house data scientists to enhance portfolio value creation, and received five stars across all UN PRI modules. CBPE also completed its first TCFD report, reinforcing its commitment to ESG best practice.
ECI Partners
Over the past year, ECI has completed four new platform investments: Independent Governance Group, Croud, CMap, and Insurance Insider - all delivered in under six weeks at the end of 2024. This pace reflects the scale and agility of ECI's origination and investment processes, supported by its proprietary AI origination platform Amplifind™, the cohesion of the team, and the strength of its trusted network.
These investments align with ECI’s strategy of backing high-growth, resilient businesses. In a challenging market, its deep sector insight, experience, and collaborative approach, has enabled the team to originate and execute consistently and at speed.
Beyond new investments, ECI has worked closely with its portfolio to unlock value, for example supporting with international expansion, M&A execution, and advancing AI and data maturity to ensure competitive advantage.
ECI's mission is to build successful, sustainable businesses prepared for long term growth. As a B-Corp certified business, ESG is embedded across the lifecycle of its partnerships, from pre-deal to exit. In 2024, this evolved further with the launch of ECI’s first Impact Report and through joining the ESG Data Convergence Initiative to drive consistency and quality in ESG reporting across private equity.
The last 12 months has been a year of strong activity. ECI's commitment to long term value creation, hands-on support, and collaborative culture make it a standout partner in the UK mid-market.
Epiris
Despite a challenging dealmaking landscape, Epiris’ expertise in solving complexity and unlocking businesses’ potential is driving outstanding returns. The firm’s strong track record is highlighted by its ranking #3 globally and #1 in Europe in the HEC-Dow Jones 2024 mid-market buyout performance index. In February 2024, Epiris held the final close on Fund 3 which was oversubscribed at its hard cap of £1bn despite the challenging global fundraising market.
Fund 3 is off to an exceptional start driven by the successful execution of the firm’s highly differentiated strategy across its first 4 investments, Delinian, LoneStar, Pure Cremation, GSF, which together have grown EBITDA by 80% since Epiris invested, along with the latest investment Amber Taverns which the fund acquired at the end of 2024. These 5 investments have already returned more than half the capital originally invested by the fund.
Fund 2 is progressing well and has entered its harvesting phase having made total distributions of £548m or 67% of total commitments and with a clear roadmap for driving the remaining investments to exit.
This performance has been achieved against the backdrop of completion of the leadership succession following the sudden death of former Managing Partner Alex Fortescue in May 2024. This has seen Bill Priestley appointed as Managing Partner, Owen Wilson as Chief Investment Partner and Ian Wood as Head of the Investment Team and strong commitment and continuity across the Partner group.
Inflexion
This was a period of outstanding performance, successful fundraising, international expansion and continued growth and innovation for Inflexion.
The firm saw six exits generating £2.3bn in proceeds with an average gross return of 3.9x, and made eight platform investments with a £1bn combined equity value. 100% of the new investments were directly originated and Inflexion was the first PE backer for two-thirds.
The portfolio achieved 20% EBITDA growth and increased headcount by 10%. International revenues increased by 24%. Inflexion supported 80 bolt-on acquisitions in 13 countries across three continents with a combined investment of over £1bn.
Alongside all this, Inflexion successfully closed Inflexion Enterprise Fund VI at its £975m hard cap in September 2024, more than doubling its predecessor, and Inflexion Continuation Fund I at £2.3bn in May 2025, the largest multi-asset continuation fund raised in Europe to date.
The firm also established its presence in the US with the appointment of Ben Meyer as Partner and Head of North America. Ben will lead a new office for Inflexion in New York, building a dedicated team which will focus primarily on supporting ambitious portfolio companies to accelerate their North American growth through transformational acquisitions.
Inflexion made 42 appointments across the firm, boosting the investment team, value acceleration and specialist functions such as IR and marketing. The Inflexion Sustainability Academy was launched, bringing together ESG champions from across the portfolio to embed skills that are key to delivering sustainable business practices. The Inflexion Foundation donated £3.7m to 28 charities.
Voting Closed
To find out who won, book a table at the British Private Equity Party Awards 2025 on Tuesday, 30 September at The Brewrey, London