HomeResearch & Knowledgeback to HomeEntrepreneurshipback to Research & KnowledgeEvoco AG: Unlocking private equity potentialback to Entrepreneurship

Case Study

Evoco AG: Unlocking private equity potential

By Benoit F. Leleux and Ricardo Rodriguez Plazas

16 pages

September 2025

Order this case study

Reference: IMD-2689

Michel Galeazzi and Felix Ackermann, founding partners of the private equity firm Evoco, sat with the rest of the team pondering the latest strategic issues. Evoco had evolved significantly as a fund manager since its creation in 2012, taking advantage of newly identified opportunities and developing novel competencies. Its first three funds had an excellent track record, which provided a strong platform to continue learning and to evolve the business models of its funds. Evoco’s founding premise was to develop business solutions for governance and liquidity issues that emerged in private equity, creating investment opportunities for its investors in the process. The first two funds, Evoco TSE I and II, focused primarily on developing secondary solutions for liquidity and governance issues in private equity, i.e. acquiring portfolios of positions in late-stage or undermanaged buyout funds, and creating value by accelerating exits and engineering a palette of value-creating, hands-on strategic initiatives. The sellers typically required liquidity for some reason, e.g. new investment paradigms, better allocation opportunities or team reorganization. With Evoco TSE III, the strategy was refined, opening the door to single-asset deals and ever more original value creation interventions facilitated by majority ownership positions. When US President Donald Trump announced a tsunami of new tariffs on ‘Liberation Day’ 2 April 2025, the world of trade and industry was thrown into disarray, and private equity with it. Would it make sense to capitalize on the upheaval by tweaking the firm’s strategy again to fine-tune an even more compelling investment proposition? Which direction should that take?

Learning Objective

Discuss liquidity and governance issues in private equity funds.
Understand better value propositions for secondaries funds.
Review critical features of the relationship between LP and GP in private equity.

Keywords

Entrepreneurship, Finance, Venture Capital, Buy-out, Governance, Liquidity, Exit, Private Equity, Exit Strategy, Secondary Equity Offering, Fundraising

Settings

Europe
Evoco, Finance and Insurance, Private Equity
2011-2025

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

IMD case studies are distributed through case clearing houses. In order to browse the collection and purchase copies please visit the links below.

The Case Centre

Cranfield University

Wharley End Beds MK43 0JR, UK
Tel +44 (0)1234 750903
Email [email protected]

Harvard Business School Publishing

60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163, USA
Tel (800) 545-7685 Tel (617)-783-7600
Fax (617) 783-7666
Email [email protected]

Asia Pacific Case Center

NUCB Business School

1-3-1 Nishiki Naka
Nagoya Aichi, Japan 460-0003
Tel +81 52 20 38 111
Email [email protected]

IMD retains all proprietary interests in its case studies and notes. Without prior written permission, IMD cases and notes may not be reproduced, used, translated, included in books or other publications, distributed in any form or by any means, stored in a database or in other retrieval systems. For additional copyright information related to case studies, please contact Case Services.

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Keep reading

Article

Why CFO leadership matters more in volatile times

CFO leadership in volatile times is critical as finance leaders use discipline, risk insight, and strategy to guide companies through disruption

Finance Leadership

By I by IMD

in I by IMD

Article

Why the Fed is not ready to bet on AI just yet

Kevin Warsh focused his first conference as Federal Reserve chair on June 17 on a familiar problem: fast-rising prices fuelled by the Iran war. Yet another challenge facing central banks goes beyond the immediate inflation shock. As investors plac...

Artificial Intelligence Finance

By Karl Schmedders

in The National

29 June 2026

Podcast

Banking’s biggest digital shift - Ralph Hamers - IbyIMD

Ralph Hamers on leading banking’s biggest digital shift: why banks must be tech-forward and how AI could redefine financial advice.

Finance Innovation Leadership Strategy

By Murat Tarakci

in I by IMD

Case Study

Slow Forest Coffee: Can a regenerative model scale?

Sustainability Supply Chain Entrepreneurship Purpose

By Benoit F. Leleux, Julia K. Binder and Rina Raikamo

Book

Finance confidential: Corporate finance insights for business leaders

Every executive eventually hits a moment of truth. A new project, a bold expansion, a promising acquisition, and suddenly the hard questions are right in front of you: Will this venture be profitable? Will it generate cash flow? How much capital w...

Finance

By Salvatore Cantale and Polina Bochukova

Article

From spiritual refraction to civic wealth maintenance: How indigenous community enterprises read civic threats through a shared religious prism

Indigenous community enterprises (ICEs) face intensifying civic threats, yet how they collectively interpret these threats drawing on religious principles remains theoretically underdeveloped. Drawing on an in-depth ethnographic study of one of th...

Entrepreneurship Sustainability

By Esther Salvi and Salah Chafik

in Journal of Business Venturing Insights

June 2026, vol. 25, e00632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2026.e00632

Article

Fly solo, then return home? Offspring's entrepreneurship experience and their future as family business successors

How does early-career entrepreneurship experience of family business offspring affect their likelihood of eventually taking over the established family firm? Considering family business succession as a dual-agency process, we draw on human capital...

Family Business Entrepreneurship

By Philipp Sieger, Jasper Brinkerink, Massimo Baù, Johan Karlsson and Alfredo De Massis

in Journal of Management Studies

29 May 2026, ePub before print, https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.70114

Article

Can lack-of-fit penalties apply to male entrepreneurs? Equity fundraising in Femtech

Persistent evidence of a male advantage in equity fundraising has led entrepreneurship scholars to assume that while women face fit penalties in male-typed industries, men are exempt from penalties in female-typed ones. Yet underlying sociological...

Entrepreneurship

By Hana Milanov, Benedikt David Christian Seigner and Erik Lundmark

in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

19 May 2026, ePub before print, https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587261444752

Article

Banks must respond strategically to these six shifts

The six powerful shifts affecting a bank’s ability to operate in the future and why bank leaders cannot afford to ignore them

Finance

By Salvatore Cantale

in I by IMD

Article

Global banks are becoming too large for states to rescue

Switzerland has reached an uncomfortable conclusion: that UBS has become too large for the state to comfortably stand behind. The government’s plan to force the bank to hold roughly $20 billion more in capital is an attempt to close that gap, even...

Competitiveness Finance

By Arturo Bris

in The National

16 May 2026

Why CFO leadership matters more in volatile times

By I by IMD
in I by IMD

Summary

CFO leadership in volatile times is critical as finance leaders use discipline, risk insight, and strategy to guide companies through disruption

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Finance

Leadership

Browse all topics

Why the Fed is not ready to bet on AI just yet

By Karl Schmedders
in The National 29 June 2026

Summary

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Artificial Intelligence

Finance

Browse all topics

Banking’s biggest digital shift - Ralph Hamers - IbyIMD

By Murat Tarakci
in I by IMD

Summary

Ralph Hamers on leading banking’s biggest digital shift: why banks must be tech-forward and how AI could redefine financial advice.

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Finance

Innovation

Leadership

Strategy

Browse all topics

Slow Forest Coffee: Can a regenerative model scale?

By Benoit F. Leleux Julia K. Binder and Rina Raikamo
Case reference: IMD-2736 ©2026

Summary

The case tracks the development of Slow Forest Coffee, a company launched in 2017 on the belief that when producing food in a regenerative way, everyone benefits. Farmers flourish, nature thrives and the economy prospers. By 2025 Slow had converted almost 600 hectares of degraded monoculture coffee plantations in Laos into booming agroforestry farms, ensuring the preservation of an additional 1,000+ hectares by working with local smallholders. The coffee was roasted, packed and delivered by Slow to offices, hotels and coffee chains across Northern Europe. Thanks to vertical integration and investing in soil health and the whole ecosystem, unlike its competitors, Slow was not impacted by volatile and rapidly increasing coffee prices. The Slow model seemed to be working, both in environmental and financial terms, regenerating nature while yielding healthy, stable returns. A host of ongoing initiatives and matters needed to be discussed at the forthcoming board meeting, including which new customer segments the company should enter, how to adapt and scale marketing communications to support growth, the integration of the newly acquired coffee roaster in Kenya and the expansion of the supply base in the region, not to mention evolving resource needs as the company prepared to enter a bigger league. Slow was indeed buzzing with positive energy.

Reference IMD-2736

Organization Slow Forest

Industry Food Production, Agriculture;Consumer Goods, Coffee

Available Languages English

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Sustainability

Supply Chain

Entrepreneurship

Purpose

Browse all topics

Finance confidential: Corporate finance insights for business leaders

By Salvatore Cantale and Polina Bochukova
Published by Independently published ©2026

Summary

Available Languages English

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Finance

Browse all topics

From spiritual refraction to civic wealth maintenance: How indigenous community enterprises read civic threats through a shared religious prism

By Esther Salvi and Salah Chafik
in Journal of Business Venturing Insights June 2026, vol. 25, e00632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2026.e00632

Summary

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Entrepreneurship

Sustainability

Browse all topics

Fly solo, then return home? Offspring's entrepreneurship experience and their future as family business successors

By Philipp Sieger Jasper Brinkerink Massimo Baù Johan Karlsson and Alfredo De Massis
in Journal of Management Studies 29 May 2026, ePub before print, https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.70114

Summary

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Family Business

Entrepreneurship

Browse all topics

Can lack-of-fit penalties apply to male entrepreneurs? Equity fundraising in Femtech

By Hana Milanov Benedikt David Christian Seigner and Erik Lundmark
in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 19 May 2026, ePub before print, https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587261444752

Summary

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Entrepreneurship

Browse all topics