Front left of the stage, next to the beer tent. If you want to find Westlanders during the festival season, that’s the place to go. No matter which festival, no matter where in the Netherlands – it’s an unwritten Westland rule. Are you sure we can stay together among these large crowds? Ah, we’re fine “on our own”.
With this way of seeing things, it is a minor miracle that the variety of names to be found in the Westland stable has increased by so much over the last 20 years. Many people ‘from outside’ have apparently managed to discover Westland.
The same thing has happened to companies in the horticultural cluster. These, too, have been discovered in the last 5-10 years – discovered by Private Equity (PE). Which is a compliment to the companies concerned. Evidently, they were and are attractive brides. And with dowries that are irresistible to the incumbent shareholders. Buy & build is the motto of the future for most PE stakeholders.
Should we be happy about this?’ a client asked me the other day. In my view, this is not the right question. Buy & build is happening, and is part of, the consolidation within the cluster. Private Equity has entered the horticultural cluster. This means we are going to be seeing a lot of dynamics and changes at shareholder and board level. The time horizon PE stakeholders have is simply much shorter than that of family businesses. PE generally wants to get out within 5 to 15 years, tops. So acquisitions, divestments, new investors and reorganisations will become more frequent. Just look at the bankruptcy and relaunch of Codema Systems in recent weeks. The winners will be the companies that manage to combine the professionalism and capital of Private Equity with inspiration, leadership and the love of plants. Sounds easy. But it’s not. Here, too, we are in for some interesting times ahead.
