Guy Hands is stepping down as chief investment officer and chair at Terra Firma Capital Partners, with the firm now set to be led by Paul Hatter as COO and Hands’ son Richard Hands as Managing Director responsible for residential investments and new deals, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Guy Hands is stepping down as chief investment officer and chair at Terra Firma Capital Partners, with the firm now set to be led by Paul Hatter as COO and Hands’ son Richard Hands as Managing Director responsible for residential investments and new deals, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The Guernsey-based tax exile and karaoke enthusiast has been one of the most visible faces in European private equity, whose career in the buyout industry has spanned some three decades.
He began his investment career as a trainee trader at Goldman Sachs in 1982, later moving into leveraged buyouts when he joined a unit of Nomura in the early 1990s.
In 2002, he spun the unit out of Nomura to form his own firm, Terra Firma Capital Partners, which raised €2.1 billion for its debut fund.
Terra Firma soon became a leading private equity firm in Europe, raising €5.4 billion from investors for one of the region’s largest-ever funds prior to the onset of the global financial crisis.
But after a costly £4.2 billion deal to take EMI private, which later saw the record label collapse and wipe out £1.75 billion of Terra Firma’s money, the firm was superseded by private equity peers including CVC Capital Partners and US firms such as Blackstone and KKR & Co.
Hands said in an internal memo: “When I founded Terra Firma over 20 years ago, I vowed that I would retire from the firm ‘when I’m 64’, as per the eponymous Beatles song. That time has now come as I approach my 64th birthday this August.”
His exit comes a month after Terra Firma announced the impending departure of its chief executive, Vivek Ahuja, “to explore new opportunities”.
