Two German family offices open offices in London

If Brexit might be causing some degree of unsettledness among investors it has not stopped two German family offices setting up offices in London in the last year.

Serafin, a Munich-based family office, opened an office in London earlier this year. And TruVenturo, a Hamburg-based family office, has recently hired an investment manager to be based in London.

Serafin managers the money of members of the Haindl family, who sold the family business, Germany’s biggest paper producer G.Haindl’sche Papierfabriken, to a Finnish competitor in 2001 for €3.6 billion.

Serafin was set up by family member Philipp Haindl in 2010, and it has since gone on to make a number of acquisitions in the small and medium-sized business sector in Europe. These include Perlon, which makes polyester filaments, suki.international, a distribution group, and Bama, a shoe-care company, which Serafin bought from SC Johnson in August.

Serafin hired Megha Kapoor to head the London office, which is based in Mayfair. Kapoor worked for Serafin in Munich before moving to London to set up the family office’s branch there. She also spent just over a year at EY in Germany before joining Serafin. According to Serafin, Kapoor and the London office will focus on acquisitions in the UK, Benelux and Scandinavia.  

“We already know the market in the UK well, but a local presence will allow us to intensify our activities and meet the requirements of a market where we expect to see further growth,” said Philipp Haindl.

TruVenturo hired Sam Copley, a former director for the news and information group Institutional Investor, as an investment director in the summer. Copley is based in London. TruVenturo was set up by German startup specialist Nils Regge after he sold holiday rental portal Cassamundo he set up to the Dutch @Leisure group in 2010. Regge, through another group he co-founded called HomeToGo, bought back Casamundo last month.

Among TruVenturo’s other investments are online cruise ship travel group Dreamline.de, video marketing group VideoBeat Networks, and online finance comparison site Finanzcheck.de.