Apax says German Dax-30 firms on radar

By John O'Donnell

LONDON (Reuters) - Private equity giant Apax could buy one of Germany's biggest listed companies, but believes it will take pressure from Anglo-Saxon investors to make them available for sale, one of Apax's top managers said on Tuesday.

"They are in range," chief investment officer Adrian Beecroft told reporters, referring to the size of smaller companies on the DAX index of Germany's 30 biggest listed firms. "I am sure there are some interesting ones in there."

Beecroft told journalists at the Reuters Hedge Funds and Private Equity Summit in London that Germany had been disappointingly slow as a market for private equity.

But he believed that Anglo-Saxon investors such as those that forced out management at Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) could change this.

And he said Apax could move on companies as big as those in the DAX .GDAXI. The DAX is home to some of the best-known names in German industry, including DaimlerChrysler DCXGn.DE and Lufthansa (LHAG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

He predicted that Anglo-Saxon investors would play a bigger role in companies across Europe and would pressure management into action in the same way as they had in the United Kingdom.

"I think you will see more homogenization of markets around Europe in terms of these investors' role," he said.

He referred to the example of ITV (ITV.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the television company that Apax and others recently tried to buy in the UK, as an example of how investors could force managers to sell.

"There is a lot of pressure from investors on companies (in the UK) to do something," he said. "You don't hear of that kind of pressure from investors in Germany."

Beecroft said, however, he did not expect the buy-out market among Germany's small and medium-sized companies to pick up soon.

Private equity companies, which typically back a company's management team as part of the acquisition, have identified Germany as a market with big potential.

Although one of Europe's biggest private-equity markets, it remains about half the size of the UK. And there is still reluctance among many company owners to sell to private equity investors, which were labeled locusts by a prominent German politician.

"When we went into Germany, there was all this talk about post-war companies and generational change," said Beecroft.

"The German market is not all we expected it to be, and it continues to be slow. I am as mystified by it as most people are. I don't imagine that there will be a sudden burst of transactions. Not for the next few years."