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“If you would have gone to a business school five years ago and put your hand up and said, ‘I want to create a beauty company or a clean foods company’, people would have looked at you and said that you were clearly either maladjusted or misguided. Because where’s the opportunity in that?
“Whereas now it’s the other way around. Make no mistake about it, I’m seeing extraordinary talent devoting themselves to creating consumer goods.”
Verlinvest: ‘The drivers have changed in favour of the smaller brands’
A family-owned investment business with a combined asset value of €1.6bn, Verlinvest focuses its investment on four categories: Digital and E-Commerce, Food and Beverages, Healthcare, and Education. In its own way it, too, is very clear about having a different culture around investment; Verlinvest describes itself as a ‘patient investor’, taking a long-term view and developing close relationships with the brands it invests in – relationships which it describes as ‘hands with’, rather than ‘hands on’. They characterise around 75% of the investments across their portfolio
as challengers.
Eric Melloul is Managing Director at Verlinvest, with an entrepreneurial role in big companies behind him, including starting two offices for McKinsey, followed by key Commercial and
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