When a principal’s family office buys a business from the private equity group they founded…and goes long term

One of the UK’s top private equity dealmakers through his family office has bought a big asset from the private equity group he set up, suggesting the evolution of a more long-term investment focus. 

Hands Family Office, the Guernsey-based investment office of UK financier Guy Hands, has bought Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC), a huge Australian agricultural business. 

Hands, who also lives in Guernsey, is the founder and chairman of Terra Firma Capital Partners, one of the biggest private equity firms in Europe, which bought CPC back in 2008.

CPC is the largest private cattle company in Australia, with 3.2 million hectares of land, holding around 300,000 head of cattle. According to local media reports, the family office paid around $500 million to $600 million for CPC. 

Hands said he saw the acquisition as a “multi-generational family investment”. He added: “CPC fits perfectly with our family’s other long-term investments, including forestry, hotels and an award-winning Tuscan winery.”

Hands, 61, looks to be concentrating on building a sizable family investment portfolio separate from Terra Firma, although will links at the same time. In an internal memo to staff at the private equity firm on the appointment of a new CEO early this year, Hands said the move was designed to: “ensuring clarity and alignment of the firm’s objectives with those of the Hands Family Office”. 

As such, although Terra Firma did well from its stake in CPC, Hands and his private equity group might have felt it was more of a long-term investment family office play, rather than a short-term private equity one. 

Hands, through his family office, is one of the biggest private forestry owners in Scotland, owning around 14,000 acres of land in Perthshire. He and his wife Julia also own Hand Picked Hotels Holdings and Villa Saletta, a winery in Tuscany.