Profile

Bregal Milestone (“Milestone”), founded in 2018 and based in London, UK, is a leading Pan-European Technology Private Equity Manager. Milestone invests and provides operational expertise to ambitious European high-growth technology companies benefiting from secular trends, with a specific focus on software. Milestone aims to generate strong, asymmetric returns for its investors by combining strong downside protection with unlimited upside participation through four main strategic pillars: (i) tech-enabled, data-driven sourcing; (ii) structural advantage; (iii) operational focus with Milestone’s in-house value creation and data science team; and (iv) a strong commitment to ESG. The firm invests equity stakes of €20 to 100 million in profitable, high-margin technology businesses that operate in pan-European markets with structural tailwinds.

Awards

2023 Top Growth Equity Firms

Key People

Milestone was established in 2018 by Jan Bruennler, Philippe Lautenberg and Cyrus Shey, who collectively have over 60 years of relevant experience and continue to run Milestone today as Managing Partners. The Managing Partners have built complementary skills and market insight through more than 17 years of investing and collaborating together prior to founding Milestone. 

Jan Bruennler, Managing Partner

Mr. Bruennler is a Managing Partner of Milestone and a member of the Firm’s IC. Prior to founding Milestone, Mr. Bruennler was a Partner at Makuria Investment Management, where he led investments in the equity and debt of European companies with a focus on growth companies and complex situations. Before his time at Makuria, Mr. Bruennler originated and invested in European equity and debt investments at Sculptor Capital (formerly known as Och-Ziff Capital Management). Mr. Bruennler began his career in Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division in London, where he executed complex M&A and leveraged finance transactions across Europe.

Philippe Lautenberg, Managing Partner

Mr. Lautenberg is a Managing Partner of Milestone and a member of the Firm’s IC. Prior to founding Milestone, Mr. Lautenberg was a co-founder and Head of the European middle market lending business at Credit Suisse, investing in European growth companies using the firm’s proprietary capital. Before setting up this business, Mr. Lautenberg was a senior member of Credit Suisse’s European Special Situations Group. Earlier in his career, Mr. Lautenberg co-founded and ran Circle Capital Partners, a renewable energy investment firm. Philippe began his career in investment banking at ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank.

Cyrus Shey, Managing Partner

Mr. Shey is a Managing Partner of Milestone and a member of the Firm’s IC. Prior to founding Milestone, Mr. Shey was a co-founder and Head of the European middle market lending business at Credit Suisse, investing private capital in European growth companies using the firm’s proprietary capital. Before setting up this business, Mr. Shey held various senior positions at Goldman Sachs where he originated, arranged and invested in leveraged buyouts and growth capital financings. Mr. Shey began his career as a strategy consultant at Accenture in London.

Rob Hetherington,Operating Partner & Head of Milestone Performance Partners

Mr. Hetherington leads MPP, Milestone’s in-house value creation team. He has over 25 years’ experience in international leadership roles in some of the foremost software and services businesses in the world. He has significant experience of advising and working with C-level executives, of selling industry vertical and enterprise software, and of selling and delivering large scale, complex business and technology change programmes in a variety of industries. Immediately before joining Milestone full time, Mr. Hetherington was a Senior Vice President at Blue Prism, the market-leading and fast growing (80+ % YoY) robotics/AI software business where he led its Financial Services team (c. 60% of the firm’s revenues). Prior to this, he was a Global Vice President at SAP, the largest European software business, where he led the company’s €2 billion p.a. global Financial Services business for several years and was responsible for the activities of 2000+ professionals across software sales, marketing, services and support. He refocused the business to take advantage of new disruptive technologies (e.g. AI, Blockchain, IoT etc.) and to position SAP as an innovation leader and a key digital transformation enabler in the global Financial Services industry. Results under his tenure were the strongest on record—double digit licence growth (including 50% + cloud growth) in his final year in role. Prior to joining SAP, Mr. Hetherington had a 20-year consulting career. He was a Senior Managing Director at Accenture and Cap Gemini, and led significant consulting businesses (€300-500 million revenue p.a.) for these firms across Europe and internationally, with business management, client relationship development and client delivery responsibilities.

Funds Raised

Milestone was formed in 2018 by Managing Partners Jan Bruennler, Philippe Lautenberg and Cyrus Shey. In 2018, Milestone successfully raised a €495 million fund which has since been fully invested. As of February 2024, the Fund has distributed 0.8x to investors making it a top quartile European Fund in terms of DPI. In 2022, Milestone went on to raise Fund II at €770m to continue executing its successful investment strategy partnering with high growth technology companies in Europe. 

Key Investments

ePassi: Exited August 2023
Sector: Fintech, Corporate Benefits

Europe’s largest digital corporate benefits and mobile payments.

InfoCert: Invested February 2022
Sector: Digital Trust

Leading European provider of digital trust solutions.

Cube: Invested September 2022
Sector: RegTech

Leading global provider of regulatory intelligence software.

M-Files: Invested December 2020
Sector: Enterprise Application

Description: Enterprise Content Management software provider.

Anywhere365: Invested December 2019
Sector: Software

Enterprise dialogue management software solutions.

Redstor: Invested December 2021
Sector: Software

Category-leading SaaS provider of data management and protection solutions for SMBs.

Capital Responsibility

Bregal has a long track record of implementing ESG into the investment decision making process and is one of the leaders in Europe for ESG implementation. We have a large team of 7 full time professionals exclusively dedicated to ESG and fully integrated into the investment process. We have science-based climate targets for all companies. Milestone has set ambitious targets to achieve 40% of invested capital to have SBTi by 2025 and 100% by 2030 and is currently on track to hit 2025 targets. We believe that a company’s approach to ESG is a solid indicator of its prospects of long-term, sustainable value creation, therefore ESG is integrated throughout our investment processes and ownership practices. Our dedicated internal ESG team work closely together with Milestone Performance Partners to develop and implement concrete ESG improvement initiatives. We have completed a full Scope 1, 2, & 3 carbon and cybersecurity assessment as a part of our commitment to help achieve sustainable growth not just as an aspiration, but as an unwavering commitment. Our dedication to ESG is one of many pillars that fuels our pursuits to transform our portfolio companies to deliver value to society and the planet. Other highlights include completing our second annual portfolio ESG review cycle, which included a full Scope 1, 2 & 3 carbon and cybersecurity assessment, delivering a high completion rate of strategic ESG projects defined as part of the annual ESG review, and setting science-based targets in line with the Paris Agreement for certain portfolio companies. 

In addition to the above, we also have the Bregal Sustainable Development Financing (SDF) program. The SDF provides companies with a €50 million pool of capital that provides loans on attractive terms to existing Bregal portfolio companies to implement sustainability projects that don’t have the typical PE risk return profile but enhance the companies value, and generate positive environmental or social impact.

CEO Reviews

Pekka Rantala, CEO of ePassi

“Bregal Milestone brings a truly entrepreneurial spirit to Epassi. The Milestone team has played a significant role in helping Epassi achieve annual growth rates in excess of 40% as we continue to go from strength-to-strength reinforcing our position as the market-leading employee benefits technology platform.”

Fernando Benito, Co-founder and CEO of Paack

“Having grown at over 200% annually in recent years, we wanted to onboard a value-adding partner to retain focus and drive continued growth. We look forward to working with Milestone on further enhancing the commercialisation of our award-winning technology as well as our internationalisation.”

Paschal Naylor, CEO of Arkphire

“Bregal Milestone has been an awesome partner. We enthusiastically recommend them for entrepreneurs seeking a growth partner. The entire Bregal Milestone team were instrumental to accelerating Arkphire’s growth culminating in a highly successful exit.”