Private Equity. Life Sciences Portfolio. Executive Search.

Private equity acquires established companies as majority owner, usually with debt. The classic holding period is around five years. Value is created through three levers: revenue growth, margin expansion, multiple expansion. At the end stands the exit: the sale to a strategic buyer (trade sale), to another financial investor (secondary buyout) or an IPO.

Since 2022 the weight of these levers has shifted fundamentally. Multiple expansion and cheap leverage barely contribute any more. What remains is the operational side: revenue and margin. That is exactly why the people question in the portfolio is no longer an administrative task but the most direct route to value gain.

The tailwind for healthcare has never been stronger. In 2025, healthcare private equity reached a record deal volume of around 191 billion US dollars according to Bain, with 445 buyouts and an exit value of around 156 billion US dollars, up from just 54 billion in 2024. Sponsor-to-sponsor deals accounted for 76 percent of exit value. In Germany, the private equity market invested around 15.69 billion euros in 2025 according to BVK, of which around 10.66 billion euros went into buyouts. The defining sponsor-to-sponsor deal of the year came from pharma: the sale of STADA to a group led by CapVest.

For context: these record figures describe healthcare worldwide and the German private equity market as a whole, not the DACH pharma segment alone. But they show where the capital is flowing. And where capital flows, demand for leadership follows with a short lag.

The core for executive search is buyouts and buy-and-build: majority acquisitions with a clear value creation plan. Cleanly separated from that are growth equity, where minorities are acquired and management usually stays, and venture capital in biotech, where science-driven founding teams follow a hiring logic of their own.

The attractive sub-segments are those with predictable revenue and operational leverage. According to Bain, pharma services investors deliberately target premium assets with high revenue visibility and broad pharma customer exposure, avoiding the volatility of early-stage biotech. In medtech, investors apply proven playbooks aimed at revenue growth, margin expansion and multiple expansion. Add healthcare IT with data and insights businesses, which according to Bain has been growing its share of healthcare deal activity for years.

The DACH region is one of Europe's largest buyout markets, and pharma and life sciences are among its most active sectors. A selection of publicly documented transactions from 2022 to 2026 shows the range: from billion-euro buyout to mid-market platform.

Large houses with healthcare activity include EQT, KKR, Bain Capital, Cinven, BC Partners, Nordic Capital, Partners Group, Carlyle, Permira, Astorg and CapVest. Healthcare-focused mid-caps and specialists with DACH exposure include ARCHIMED, Gilde Healthcare, Great Point Partners, DPE, IK Partners and Paragon Partners.

The typical pattern in mid-sized pharma: a founder- or family-led company has a strong product and solid technology, but an underdeveloped, often personally network-driven sales function. The investor buys the substance and wants to scale commercially. The skill that was not needed before, because the focus was on the product, now becomes critical to success: professional commercial management, pricing, key account management, internationalisation, channel strategy, portfolio expansion.

A pharmaceutical company is legally required to have a Qualified Person under § 14 AMG (German Medicines Act), personally liable for batch release, plus separate heads of production and quality control. These roles are legally indispensable, and the talent pool is tight. From an investor's perspective, however, they are hygiene, not a value lever: they secure the licence to operate, they do not generate value gain.

The investor's question is therefore not: How do I replace the QP? It is: Where does the value gain come from, and which skills do I need for it? The answer is almost always commercial or general management. We fill both, and the mandatory roles along with them.

Both perspectives are legitimate; they simply prioritise differently. A family business thinks in generations and can invest broadly and long-term. Private equity thinks in the holding period: results must become visible within one to two years so they feed the exit story. Resources are allocated by return logic, to a few levers with measurable EBITDA effect.

In pharma B2B this pace collides with the reality of sales cycles. New-client projects at CDMOs typically take many months to more than two years, because qualification, tech transfer and audits are required. But the investor needs fast visibility. The consequence: it takes leaders who can work short-term levers such as pricing, cross-selling into the existing base and pipeline conversion in parallel with structural levers such as new clients and new markets, and who prioritise ruthlessly.

That is the central suitability filter for candidates. Whoever can think through the investor's lens, prioritise and deliver in holding-period logic, fits. Whoever thinks only long-term-generalist or purely technical does not. We make that distinction before a profile reaches your shortlist.

Alongside general management, the most common PE mandate is a targeted hire that buys access you could not build organically fast enough. Two patterns recur constantly.

An executive or sales director from a competitor brings market knowledge, client relationships and speed. In Germany, deliberately recruiting a competitor's employees is fundamentally legal and an expression of free competition. The limits are set by post-contractual non-compete clauses, which are only enforceable with compensation under §§ 74 ff. HGB (German Commercial Code), and by unfair methods. Managed cleanly, this is a classic, plannable search mandate: non-competes are checked early, transition periods planned realistically, the approach stays discreet.

A CDMO or supplier deliberately hires someone from the customer side, for example from a pharma corporation. The effect: credibility, a shared language and open doors at exactly that target client group. In a business where sales cycles run through qualification, audits and tech transfer, this one hire measurably shortens the time to revenue.

Both access strategies are our craft. They show most clearly what happens when PE speed meets a real industry network.

Leadership change in the PE portfolio is structural, not the exception. According to the 11th PE Leadership Survey by AlixPartners (2026, 427 respondents), 65 percent of PE firms report CEO changes during the holding period; only 9 percent rarely replace. 83 percent of PE managers say an unplanned CEO change extends the holding period; almost half say it reduces returns. And 86 percent of changes are initiated by the investor, not the CEO.

The maths that follows is simple. Within a limited holding period, every unplanned or badly filled change costs return directly. A specialised partner who fills fast and accurately is therefore a value driver, not a cost item. What unfilled key positions actually cost is documented in our own analyses of the economic impact on pharma companies: revenue losses in the millions.

Where value is created depends on the type of investment. Whoever builds a production platform earns the margin in the plant: better asset efficiency (OEE), better on-time delivery (OTD), more capacity. Whoever scales a product business earns the revenue in the market: access, pricing, key account management. And whoever sells into the pharma industry, whether APIs, equipment, services or data, sells into a highly regulated environment unlike any other. That is why we differentiate the roles along the value lever, not along the org chart.

For the search itself this means: seven-figure deals in this market are closed only through insiders. Candidates who know qualification, audits and compliance boundaries from the inside, and a headhunter who knows where those candidates sit.

What is needed is the rare combination of two worlds. On one side, PE logic: speed, equity story, hands-on profiles, reporting cadence, sponsor communication, 100-day thinking, prioritisation by return. On the other, pharma expertise: the commercial mechanics of each sub-segment plus a resilient candidate network down to commercial, site head and quality roles.

The very largest PE houses work with generalist search brands under framework agreements. In the DACH mid-market with its niche and mid-cap funds, pharma depth beats brand overhead. That is exactly where we work, as a specialised headhunter for pharma and life sciences: every mandate stays in one pair of hands. The seniority that wins the assignment also runs the search and assesses the candidates.