Backer Group is Kerim Baccari and Francesca Colantuoni. We are based in London, and we spent the first part of our careers in private equity and management consulting, buying and improving companies on behalf of large institutions.
A few years ago we left that world to do it for ourselves, and to do it differently. Instead of buying a business to sell it again within a few years, we set out to build a group of great companies and own them for the long term. Today that group generates around £5m in combined annual profit, and we are not looking to sell any of it.
We saw up close how the standard model works. A private equity firm buys a company, has a few years to make the numbers jump, and then sells. It can be lucrative, but it is disruptive. To hit the timetable, the buyer often has to cut costs hard, push prices, change the management and squeeze the business in ways that are not in its long-term interest.
A trade buyer is different, but rarely gentler. Your company is usually absorbed into a larger group, and the brand, the identity and the people that made it what it is can quietly disappear.
We think there is a better way to own a company, and a better outcome for the people who built one. Because we hold for the long term, we have no reason to be disruptive. We can keep the team, protect the brand and reinvest patiently, because we will be there long enough to see it pay off.
