Penta Investments, a Central European investment group focused on private equity and real estate, currently has EUR 500 million ready for new investments. Based on preliminary numbers for 2008, the company estimates its total assets around EUR 2 billion.
“We have strong internal competition for funding our investments, thus we do not allocate our resources by countries but allocation solely depends on assessing particular investment projects,” Martin Kúšik, Penta’s Founding Partner said.
The company has strong presence in Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia and over the last six months has been actively pursuing investment opportunities in Russia.
The investment team of Penta in Moscow is led by Slav Bochkarev. He performs the position of an Investment Director and is responsible for sourcing, evaluation and execution of private equity investments in Russia, other CIS countries and Turkey following Penta’s active hands-on investment philosophy. The difficulty of funding investments through leverage in Russia is compensated by the abundance of companies with existing debt on their balance sheets, and Penta’s focus on special situations differentiates it from most other private equity investors.
“Penta has been very successful in executing turnarounds and market consolidations. We expect to benefit from this extensive operational expertise in the current environment in Russia, where the market generates promising investment opportunities,” Slav Bochkarev said.
Slav Bochkarev is well known in the global investment community and has performed a number of senior investment positions in Europe and in the U.S. Born and raised in Moscow, he joined Penta from Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, where he was a member of the original six-person team managing six global private equity funds totalling USD 7 billion. During his tenure at Morgan Stanley, he sourced, evaluated and executed over 45 private equity investments representing over USD 1.5 billion of committed capital.