By David G. Barry
Partners Group is bringing
in an outsider to head its private equity unit – a unit which accounts for half
of the private markets firm’s assets.
Wolf-Henning Scheider will join Partners as a partner and head of its
private equity department. He is currently CEO and chairman of ZF Group, which
manufactures systems for passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and industrial
technology. It generates more than €38 billion ($38.2 billion) in annual
revenue and employs more than 150,000 people. His background also includes
serving as CEO and chairman of MAHLE Group and serving as a member of Robert
Bosch’s management board.
Scheider succeeds David Layton, who is Partners Group’s CEO. Layton, who
has been with Partners since 2005, retained leadership of the private equity
department after becoming co-CEO of the firm in 2018 and sole CEO in 2021.
Partners has $127 billion in assets under management, with $63 billion of them
in private equity.
The firm said that Scheider will “give particular focus” to its control private
equity portfolio, which is organized around four industry verticals: goods
& products, health & life, services, and technology. Within this
portfolio, the firm owned more than 100 companies in 23 countries and employed
over 250,000 individuals as of March 31.
In a statement, Layton said with “more than three decades of senior management
experience, [Scheider] is ideally positioned to deepen the operational
expertise that underlies our transformational investing efforts. In this
changeable macroeconomic environment, the ability to truly transform companies
will be a crucial point of differentiation in private equity.”
