Oakley also continued to demonstrate its own entrepreneurial DNA and ability to innovate to create opportunities, backing insurance industry veteran Enrico Vanin to launch an insurance services platform, Tiger HoldCo. Tiger will pursue an ambitious, southern European strategy to consolidate high-performance, high-growth players in the highly fragmented commercial specialty insurance services market, which is estimated to be worth over €40 billion. This follows Oakley’s investment behind former Allianz executive Joachim Muller, who is pursuing a similar roll-up strategy in the DACH market for insurance services. Backing highly experienced individuals with entrepreneurial ambitions and a credible path to growth, Tiger and Konzept & Marketing represent, perhaps, the most classically Oakley investments.

The portfolio continued to demonstrate robust performance during 2025, delivering sustainable earnings, with organic LTM EBITDA growth of 11%. Key contributors to performance during the period included testing, inspection, certification and compliance (‘TICC’) specialist Phenna Group, which benefitted from strong organic growth and value-accretive M&A; TechInsights, an indirect beneficiary of the boom in AI investment amid demand for its content and IP services; and Oakley’s early years and K12 education platforms, which continued to see strong demand for high-quality education.

Importantly, Oakley also delivered realisations, including the sale of its stake in atHome, owner of Luxembourg’s leading property and automotive marketplaces, and a standout exit of legaltech platform vLex, at a $1 billion valuation (more on which can be found here).

Despite Oakley’s success, sentiment around the broader private equity market remains subdued, and we often see questions from investors about the prospects for the private equity model in the face of macroeconomic challenges. Many current or prospective shareholders may have similar questions but, when applied to Oakley, often these concerns do not apply.

How is private equity able to remain successful in today’s economic environment?

Higher interest rates in recent years have raised the cost of debt and tightened underwriting standards across the market. This has called into question a private equity model that is perceived as being dependent on leverage, particularly at a time when economic growth has been uneven and unpredictable.

It is important to note that those conditions are particularly problematic for private equity strategies that utilised cheap leverage and multiple expansion as their primary return drivers. Since its inception, Oakley Capital has relied on neither. Oakley has always focused on achieving returns through operational value creation and expansion via acquisition, not financial engineering, and the average Net Debt/EBITDA Multiple across our portfolio is low compared with peers, standing at 4.1x. Our focus on companies which combine defensive attributes, such as recurring revenues, low leverage and strong margins, with strong positioning in sectors underpinned by secular structural growth, means Oakley has continued to deliver positive performance through economic cycles. Over the past five years we have delivered 88% NAV growth in OCI (inclusive of dividends), driven primarily by the performance of our portfolio and the strength of our realisations. For us, the fact that investors are now more alert to this divergence in the performance of managers is an opportunity to distinguish Oakley further.

Why do some private equity firms struggle to fundraise while others don’t?

Fundraising has been challenging across private equity for a straightforward reason – for many managers, exits have been slower to materialise, which has reduced distributions back to investors. Having made significant allocations to private equity in previous years, many institutional investors are now increasingly selective in making new commitments. But this does not mean that investors are rejecting private equity. Instead, it means they are concentrating commitments towards managers with consistent performance, repeatable sourcing, clear differentiation and credible exit execution.

Oakley Capital’s successful close of Fund VI in March reflects that backdrop, with strong global institutional demand for Oakley’s strategy and track record. We have found that Oakley’s investors tend to resonate particularly with three features of our proposition:

• Oakley’s founder focus – We aim to be the partner of choice for entrepreneurs, bringing first-time institutional capital into founder-led businesses, helping them scale, professionalise and expand.
• Our sourcing advantage – We seek to secure transactions by aligning closely with founders, cultivating long-term and often repeat relationships with entrepreneurs. Oakley is experienced in navigating complexity and structuring partnerships that other managers cannot replicate. We seek to avoid securing transactions by paying the highest price.
• Oakley’s European advantage – Our established European footprint with deep local knowledge and networks underpins much of Oakley’s success. We have the experience and contacts necessary to not only enable companies to thrive in their local markets but to become European or global category leaders.

Oakley’s strong realisations, including c.€1.3 billion across the Oakley Funds over the last two years, further demonstrate the strength of our track record, and give us considerable confidence about our current portfolio.

Can private equity deliver exits and distributions in a muted M&A environment?

It is true that holding periods for assets have extended across the industry, because the exit environment has been selective and financing markets have not supported marginal outcomes. IPO markets have been relatively weak, and M&A volumes have been subdued. However, just because exit markets have been selective does not mean they are closed. High-quality assets with strategic relevance still transact at impressive valuations.

For Oakley, vLex is a clear illustration of how exits can still occur when markets are muted. It was a highly attractive asset: a category-defining legal technology platform with a scaled dataset and immediate workflow integration potential. Importantly, the business saw the opportunity in AI early and pivoted its model to incorporate AI in a way that was value enhancing for customers, because it is grounded in an expansive set of proprietary content providing meaningful efficiencies for clients. As a result, vLex was highly attractive to potential acquirers, who were willing to pay a significant premium to achieve a strategic advantage. More broadly, it demonstrates that the market is rewarding assets with true differentiation, strong fundamentals and clear strategic value.

While IPO markets have been subdued, particularly in Europe, the direct impact on Oakley has been minimal. As the first institutional investor into most of the companies it backs, Oakley has never been dependent on IPO markets to achieve exits. That said, recent signs that IPO markets are slowly coming back to life should provide an indirect benefit for Oakley’s exit pipeline, as large global GPs conduct exits, reducing ‘indigestion’ and improving risk appetite.