In its 17 years of existence, BC Partners has become one of only a handful of buy-out firms that investors think of as genuinely pan-European.

Where most firms set themselves up in one country and gradually add foreign subsidiaries, BC Partners established offices in Hamburg, Paris and London in 1987 before starting to invest its first fund. The Milan office that it opened two years later ranks equally with the other three and the firms' eight managing partners rotate their fortnightly meetings between each location. Until the introduction of the euro it denominated funds in ecus.