The situation: Three generations, no fourth
The company was founded in 1962 by the seller's grandfather, taken over in the 1980s by the father and led since the late 1990s by the current managing director (age 67). Specialty: packaging machinery for the food industry, with long-standing OEM customers across the DACH region and a subsidiary in Northern Italy.
The MD's three children had declined operational succession — one son in academia, a daughter in medicine, another son in investment banking in London. The owner family wanted to preserve the company but not run it themselves.
In parallel, liquidity pressure had built up: a necessary machinery-park modernisation step was not financed in 2022/23 (banks saw the succession risk), orders shifted, working capital deteriorated. The house bank indicated in early 2024 that resolving the ownership question was a prerequisite for the next credit period.
The owner family had unsuccessfully tried an M&A process with two Mittelstand advisory firms — inquiries came either from strategic competitors (know-how outflow risk), Search Funds (too small and too young for the responsibility), or classic PE (return expectation and 5-year exit logic not compatible). We were contacted via the IHK succession platform.
What we did: Permanent-capital acquisition in 11 weeks
Weeks 1–3: First contact, NDA, data-room access, indicative offer. Tactical communicated clearly: permanent-capital holding (no 5-year exit pressure), site and employment retention, ownership of strategic development. The family was relieved by the clarity of expectations.
Weeks 4–8: Due diligence (commercial, financial, technical, legal, Italian subsidiary separately). Negotiation with the house bank on a new credit period under Tactical ownership (€6M investment line for machinery-park modernisation, plus extension of the existing working-capital line). Structure: share deal over the German holding including the Italian subsidiary.
Weeks 9–11: Contract negotiation, closing, handover. Closing took place with all three owners (MD and two family branches from the inheritance) in a coordinated session. The senior MD stayed on for 12 months as advisory-board member to support the handover, then withdrew. A new operational management (internally promoted) took over immediately.
After closing: machinery-park modernisation started in Q3, 2 new OEM orders after the modernisation signal, working capital normalised, house-bank line expanded by 20%.
Signature element: Permanent-capital logic in succession communication
The decisive commercial lever was not the purchase price. It was credible permanent-capital logic.
Classic PE investors often face distrust at family businesses in succession crises — and rightly so: a 4–7-year exit pressure is hard to reconcile with the life-work character of a family business. Employees and customers sense it. Owner families hesitate because they do not want the company sold again after 4 years.
Tactical communicates explicitly a permanent-capital posture: we hold investments because they develop, not because an exit is missing. Investments are held across cycles, developed further, sometimes built up, sometimes consolidated — but not sold at a fixed date. This creates trust with owner families, employees and customers.
In this specific case the permanent-capital logic was the decisive factor: two higher PE offers were declined in favour of our structure because the family wanted the life's work preserved in our hands.